


Sunflower Capital

by deafpool (castielsass)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Trauma, Eddie Kaspbrak & Mike Hanlon Friendship, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, HIV/AIDS Crisis, IT Chapter Two Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Memory Related, Mike Hanlon is a Good Friend, No Underage Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Power Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Service Top Richie Tozier, Stanley Uris Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:53:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22616686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castielsass/pseuds/deafpool
Summary: “I don’t… What the fuck did you just say to me?” Eddie said, and this was bad, because his anger was abating, and Eddie knew this meant that he was in the eye of the storm of his own fury and he wasn’t sure how he’d control himself.“You don’t remember yet,” Richie said. “But you will, just-”“I’m not fuckinggay, you dick,” Eddie spit, like vitriol. “I’m married - to a woman, and I lost my fucking virginity to a girl in my class in college and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, so maybe you should just shut up!”
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon & Eddie Kaspbrak
Comments: 59
Kudos: 406





	1. The Townhouse

Eddie was loose and warm with wine. He had probably overindulged at Jade of the Orient, but who was there to judge? Myra wasn’t at his back, watching him. He had asked the waitress at the restaurant to fill up his glass again and in the back of his mind his mother had spoken to him, questioned what he had thought he was doing, and he had banished her with a shake of his head, as he so often had banished Myra. 

Not necessary, anymore, he thought to himself. He wasn’t going home to Myra, who’d hug him like a warm, soft limpet and smell the alcohol on him. Not ever again. He’d almost ordered gin, as was his usual since Myra had read that juniper berries were good for infections. Then he looked around and heard Beverly ask for a beer, and thought, childishly _well, if Bev’s allowed a beer, then I’m allowed wine _. By the time the waitress had made her way to him he’d almost chickened out, worried someone would make a joke. But then she had stopped beside him, and asked what he’d like to drink, and he said “a glass of sauvignon blanc, please,” and nobody had even looked at him.__

__Nobody stopped to question him, and the waitress simply nodded, and the world didn't stop turning because Eddie Kaspbrak ordered a girly drink. So he’d ordered another. Then another. And then they all arrived back at the Townhouse together, and Richie had slipped behind the bar and poured a whiskey for himself, for Stan, and one for Bill then shaken the bottle at Eddie._ _

__“I don’t like liquor,” Eddie said, with a minuscule slur._ _

__“There’s a chardonnay back here, Eds,” Bill had said, and pulled it out of a dusty rack, and popped it without asking. He poured a pretty tall glass, put it on the bar and Eddie had felt such a rush of affection for his old best friend that for a strange long moment he felt faintly teary._ _

__“I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood to get fucking loaded, anyone else?” Richie said, sliding a vodka soda to Beverly, and then another to Ben._ _

__Everyone made faintly agreeable noises, eventually settling around the empty main room into seats. Richie perched on the bar, his big feet settled on a stool, Bill at his side on the matching barstool. Ben shifted to the left to give Beverly a more central seat on the little sofa, and Mike slipped in beside them, a few inches away. Stan took the loveseat, and ran a hand over his curly hair anxiously. Eddie crawled into the only armchair after everyone else had settled and held his wine glass with two, slightly shaky hands. It was dim in the room, so late that the only light was cast from a few old lamps scattered around the place, and a fire burning in the little sunken fireplace, the coals red hot._ _

__Bev said;_ _

__“Should we talk about what we’re gonna do-”_ _

__And Richie cut right across her, but tipped her a wink in apology, and said “No offence, Bevvie, no fuckin’ way. If we’re gonna get murdered in this fuckin’ town I’d rather just get sloshed with my friends and not chew the fucking carpet, y’know?”_ _

__There was a faint moment of silence, a heavy breath where they all took a second to consider what the future held, and then Mike spoke._ _

__“It’s chew the cud, dude,” said Mike, and everyone erupted into laughter, a kind of relieved sound that brought the stress of the room down to a bearable level._ _

__“It’s not chew the carpet? Munch the-? I swear there’s a saying-!” Richie said, one eyebrow raised slightly in that dead giveaway of a stupid joke that always made Eddie smile. His long legs swung as he perched on the bar, slightly hunched over his knees like he was embarrassed to be so big._ _

__Mike had gone through a phase like that, Eddie remembered, as had Ben. For Ben it had been a young shame, born of embarrassment over his size, and he had always diminished himself as much as possible, kept his arms in tight, his legs close together, like taking up too much space was some terrible offence. He still held himself like that, Eddie realized, his knees tucked in close together on the couch, like he was frightened his thigh would touch Beverly. Mike had been the same when they were teenagers, when he’d shot up tall and it had taken him a few months to come to terms with his height, like it had been a decision he’d made and quickly come to regret. He’d frequently crossed his ankles and hunched a little, anything that would make him seem smaller._ _

__He would hold his bicep with the other hand, his arm laid over his chest like a seatbelt to minimise himself. He was as tall as Richie now, perhaps a hair taller, but thankfully he had grown out of holding himself like he was afraid all the time. Richie had never seemed to have grown out of it, his shoulder sloped slightly, his head was almost permanently ducked, like he was just waiting to be punched._ _

__“It’s not munch the fucking-!” Bill started and Beverly laughed over him, high and drunken, a surprisingly pleasant sound._ _

__“It’s not even chew the cud,” Ben gasped between laughs, “It’s chew the fat, you fucking… _farmer!”__ _

__“Eddie’d know all about that,” Richie interjected and Eddie tossed up a middle finger at him lazily, warm and wine-soaked. “What was I thinking of?”_ _

__“There’s a big difference between chew the fat and munch a rug, Rich,” Bev said saucily and everyone burst into childish peals of laughter again._ _

__“Well, how would I fuckin’ know?” Richie challenged and Bill grinned at him, and swung an elbow into his shin, his cheeks pink up on the top of the cheekbone like he was embarrassed._ _

__“You’ve never-?” Bill said, and trailed off, glancing at Bev briefly, like he was worried he’d offend her, which Eddie found hilarious considering she was probably the dirtiest of them all._ _

__“Uh, no,” Richie said, and left it at that, but Bill was giggling again, which set Mike off._ _

__Ben was bright red, but tipsy enough to hide his face in one hand and poke a little. “You haven’t? You never had a girlfriend who wanted it?”_ _

__“You have? Must be a recent thing,” Richie snapped, and Eddie was familiar with this tiny part of Richie, the one that struck out like a snake when he was hurt._ _

__“Ok, but seriously,” said Bill, and relief raced down Eddie’s spine when he lifted the focus off Richie. “When did you all, like… I mean, I remember most of my teenagehood, but do you guys? I can’t remember who y’all were... with.”_ _

__“Oh my god,” said Bev. “Are you asking who we lost our virginities to?” which set everyone off again, into peals of laughter._ _

__“I’m just wondering!” Bill laughed, and Bev grinned at him, pleased to make him giggle._ _

__“You first, Mike, since you’ve got the best memory here,” Bev challenged and Mike laughed, and Eddie looked up the stairs quickly. Everyone was gathered in a tight little circle, drunk and warm and they would all notice if he left._ _

__“A girl named Shaya,” Mike admitted. “We were twenty-one and she was in my church. We dated a little bit, but it didn’t... last. You know. You all were gone, at this stage.”_ _

__“Boring!” Richie announced. “This is boring, we won’t even know the people we’re talking about, change the channel, Mikey.”_ _

__“I wanna find out!” Bev insisted and giggled. “Ok, it’s terrible, are you ready?”_ _

__Against his better judgement Eddie leaned in, curious._ _

__“It was my husband,” Bev said. “He’s the only person I’ve ever slept with, isn’t that so boring and stupid?”_ _

__Nah, Eddie thought to himself. It was fine if a woman had only slept with one man, that was understandable. Far less understandable was a man who had only slept with one woman his whole life, that didn’t conjure images of a devoted loving spouse, it only indicated a sad, repressed man. Maybe that wasn’t fair, he thought to himself. But it didn’t matter. That was the way things were._ _

__“Ex, now,” Ben said quietly, and Bev smiled at him, a faint, genuine thing. “I mean, I’m just saying. Just ‘cause he was your first doesn’t mean he has to be your last.”_ _

__“It’s not stupid,” Stan said. “Mine was Patty. You’re not stupid, or boring, Bev.”_ _

__“That’s sweet,” Richie said dryly, and Eddie took a deep swallow of his wine. It was warm but it didn’t matter._ _

__“Oh, come on, Rich-!” Bev teased, after raising her glass in understanding to Stan. “Who was yours? I bet you’ve got girls in the wings, girls always liked you.”_ _

__“Fuck off,” Richie said immediately, like he thought he was being made fun of. He swirled his glass a little, in tiny circles, and the whiskey sloshed inside it clumsily._ _

__Bev tilted her head at him a little in confusion. “They did.”_ _

__“No they fuckin’ didn’t,” Richie said and slammed the rest of his whiskey._ _

__“Yeah?” Bill said, his voice pitched low. “They did? When you were a teenager, I mean, like, a little later on, girls liked you ‘cause you were funny.”_ _

__“Whatever,” Richie said, his eyes fixed on the bottle of whiskey as he poured himself two more fingers. He tipped the bottle at Bill, who waved him off with a slight frown, his own glass mostly full. “Anyway, I wanna hear about Ben, was it when you got skinny? Or did you find a girl who wanted a little extra cushion?”_ _

__“Fuck off, Richie,” Beverly said, but Ben lifted one shoulder in a gentle shrug._ _

__“I was seventeen,” Ben said. “Her name was Amy, and she worked in the library. She was nice.”_ _

__“Nice,” Eddie echoed._ _

__“Yeah, Eds, she was fuckin’ nice,” Richie repeated, a little cold in the voice. “Isn’t that sweet, how _nice_ she was?”_ _

__“What about you, Eds,” Bill asked, more used to Richie’s irritated moments than the rest of them. “Who was yours?”_ _

__“Oh, Christ,” Eddie said, and swallowed another healthy gulp of wine. “Uh, in college. We dated for a few months, before I met my...my ex-wife. Her name was Tamara. We had a couple of classes together,” he said before floundering to a halt, unsure of what he was supposed to mention. “I was twenty-four.”_ _

__“What about you, Richie?” Ben asked. “Or are we supposed to guess?”_ _

__“Oh, maybe what-was-her-name, that girl who worked in the comic book store, huh?” Bill said.  
“She was always flirting with you.”_ _

__“She was a lesbian, idiot,” Richie said. “Great gaydar, by the way.”_ _

__“Oh, whatever,” Bill said, flapping a hand at him. “Keep your secrets.”_ _

__“It’s not a secret,” Richie said, tilting the glass down his throat again. “It was a friend, when we were twenty, just a little while before I left. We hooked up, and then never fuckin’ saw each other again, cool?”_ _

__Eddie’s mouth felt dry, and he was hot all over, his fingertips buzzing with anxiety and he met Richie’s eyes once, twice, and then Richie said;_ _

__“Her name was Lacey. We went to school together.”  
__

__The air suddenly seemed thinner, like he could get enough oxygen enough to fill his lungs, but it wasn't satisfying. He could feel his diaphragrm lift up, like he was close to an asthma attack, his chest getting smaller, tighter._ _

__“I don’t remember a Lacey,” Bev said, and Bill shrugged at her._ _

__“Yeah but Richie was in all those advanced classes, remember?” Bill reminded her. Eddie tucked his feet up underneath himself, hiding in the warmth of the armchair._ _

__“That’s true,” Bev conceded, and Richie swallowed the last of his whiskey._ _

__They got drunker, and warmer, and it got later, and eventually, with stomachs hurting from laughing like they hadn’t in years, they started to peel off for bed. Mike left them with his phone number, and blast of cool night air from the front door as Bill walked him home._ _

__Ben escorted Bev and Stan up, and she clung to his offered elbow as they carefully made their slow, drunken way up the stairs, Stan just behind them, clutching to the back of Ben’s shirt like he was worried he was going to fall. Eddie lifted himself out of the warm armchair, where it had conformed comfortably to him and shook his legs out, ready for bed. He paused at the doorway as Richie spoke. There was the sound of a glass filling up again, as he poured yet another whiskey._ _

__“So, we’re just fuckin’ lying, then?” Richie asked, and his voice was strange, aggressive out of nowhere. Eddie flinched automatically at the sound of a harsh voice, and then caught himself._ _

__“Sorry?” Eddie said, his thick brows coming close together in confusion. He could almost hear Myra’s voice in his head telling him he’d wrinkle._ _

__“Are we lying?” Richie elaborated. “Or-” he frowned at Eddie for a moment, before his face smoothed out, emotionless. “Do you not remember?”_ _

__“Remember what? Lying- what the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie said, still too confused to be angry. Richie wasn’t. He slammed his glass down on the bar, the loud hollow sound shocking in the stillness of the night._ _

__“You didn’t lose your fucking virginity in college,” Richie mocked, and Eddie shook his head at him, drawing closer into the room._ _

__“How the fuck would you know?” He demanded, and Richie looked at him, a vein throbbing in his clenched jaw._ _

__“Did you even go to college with a girl named Tamara?” Richie pushed and white-hot anger settled in Eddie’s stomach._ _

__“Fuck you! What the fuck are you trying to say, asshole?” Eddie demanded._ _

__“You’re a fucking liar!” Richie hissed, and Eddie was too hot all over with anger to worry about waking the others._ _

__“You’re drunk,” Eddie said, and Richie made a face like he knew it was true, his jaw tight, like he was furious that he was being dismissed, but knew it was true._ _

__“I’m still right,” he said._ _

__“What are you talking about?” Eddie hissed and Richie rubbed both his hands over his face roughly. The fire burning behind them both gave a sudden abrupt crackle, a knot popping in the heat and they both flinched at the sound._ _

__“You don’t remember,” Richie said, quieter, after a second, like he was trying to calm himself down. “You will.”_ _

__“Remember what?” Eddie pressed. “Because if you’re standing here trying to tell me I didn’t sleep with a girl in college, haha, very fuckin’ funny, Richie, what’s the punchline?”_ _

__“There’s no punchline,” Richie sighed._ _

__“Is it a gay joke? I’ve heard it before, asshole,” Eddie said, and he closed his fingers into fists so they wouldn’t shake with anger. “Whatever it is, I’ve fucking heard it before.”_ _

__“No, it’s not a fucking punchline, it’s not a joke, not everything I say is a fucking joke.”_ _

__“What is your _point,_ Rich?”_ _

__“You lost your virginity to me,” Richie said, a slight slur in his voice, and for a moment Eddie’s breath felt like steel, clogged low in his lungs, cold and heavy. He wondered how much Richie was used to drinking, that the drinks in the restaurant and then back at the bar seemed to affect his voice so little, like perhaps he was used to drinking and terribly good at hiding it._ _

__“What?” Eddie said, sounding off even to himself._ _

__“I mean- we did. Together. You don’t remember it, yet,” Richie said, his cheeks a hot red that spread to the tips of his ears. He took a small step forward, those long legs stumbling him closer to Eddie. He lifted a hand as though he was about to reach forward, try to touch him, and Eddie wasn’t sure what he would do if Richie touched him so he recoiled._ _

__“Because it never happened,” Eddie said._ _

__“We were twenty,” Richie said. “I was at home. You came over after running the track. You were wearing running shorts and a blue tshirt, and you came over to my house and showered and I got mad because you kept dripping water out of your hair all over me. Eddie, we were in my room, and you borrowed a clean shirt, remember, and we were listening to music, I was playing a record during- and- and then you fucking freaked out about- about getting sick, and I calmed you down and said that’s not how it happens, and you said I had to promise not to tell anyone and I promised, and fucking… I don’t know what you fucking want from me, it happened, and that’s it.”_ _

__

__“I don’t… What the fuck did you just say to me?” Eddie said, and this was bad, because his anger was abating, and Eddie knew this meant that he was in the eye of the storm of his own fury and he wasn’t sure how he’d control himself._ _

__“You don’t remember yet,” Richie said. “But you will, just-”_ _

__“I’m not fucking _gay_ , you dick,” Eddie spit, like vitriol. “I’m married - to a woman, and I lost my fucking virginity to a girl in my class in college and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, so maybe you should just shut up.”_ _

__“Maybe I should,” Richie said._ _

__“You’re fucking drunk,” Eddie dismissed._ _

__“Just because you don’t remember it yet doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Richie said and Eddie’s arm whipped out, surprising even him as he threw his glass at the bar. It smashed with such a loud noise that it shocked them both. He could hear footsteps a moment later on the stairs. Wine soaked into the wood and splinters of glass embedded into the bar, and Richie looked at him._ _

__“Just because you had some fucking weird crush on me when we were kids doesn’t mean we fucked,” Eddie said, as callously as he could, before anyone came down, because the quickest way to make Richie shut up was to hurt him._ _

__“Oh, fuck you-!” Richie breathed, sounding as shocked as Eddie felt. “Seriously, fuck you. What’s your point, ‘haha, Richie’s a queer? It’s so funny that he’s so desperate and creepy?’ “_ _

__“That’s not what I said,” Eddie muttered mutinously. The footsteps grew closer on the stairs, and the panic built in Eddie’s chest, because he wanted the conversation to end before whoever it was finally came down to see what the fuss was._ _

__“Then say what you really wanna say, trust me that it’s nothing I haven’t heard before!” Richie said._ _

__“You think you were the only one Bowers called a fag?” Eddie snapped, although he regretted it immediately. It was true that Bowers and the rest had always bullied Eddie, and the rest of the Losers too, but mostly they’d made fun of how small Eddie was, his fear of sick people, his voice, or perceived prissiness. They’d called him prettyboy or girlyboy more than anything else. Homophobic in its own way, yes, but still... different. “Join the club, dumbass, he called everyone a homo.”_ _

__“I’m not talking about him.”_ _

__“Then who?”_ _

__“Myself!” Richie slurred. “You can say whatever the fuck you wanna, I can guarantee that you don’t have the turn of phrase I do!” He said, manically, like he was already looking for a joke to crack the tension._ _

__Bowers had caught them both once after school, when they’d been walking home. He hadn’t deigned to hit them any further than a rudimentary smack on the back of Richie’s head as he’d passed by. Patrick had coughed, a fake nasty cough into Eddie’s s face and grinned when he gagged.  
“You better watch out, girlyboy, if you hate sick people so much,” Bowers had said. ”I heard Bucky Beaver has the hiv!” He’d pronounced it to rhyme with “shiv” and it had made Eddie shudder. _ _

__“Yeah, I got it from your mom!” Richie had shot back, but Hockstetter and Bowers had burst into laughter._ _

__“See how he knew I was talking about him?” Bowers said to Hockstetter._ _

__“He heard you talkin’ about the fairy catching aids and said he was the one who’d give it to him!” Patrick had guffawed and Richie had turned a bright red, so frustrated at his words being tied up that he was left speechless._ _

__He was the same bright red now, the same hot mixture of embarrassment and shame. “-and whatever this fucking bullshit is,” Richie snapped. “I swear to God, you’re gonna remember and you’re gonna come fucking apologisi-”_ _

__“I’m gonna apologise to you? I’m gonna? Maybe you should fucking apologise to me!”_ _

__“For what?” Richie demanded._ _

__“For being such a fucking liar!”_ _

__“Oh, you fucking piece of shit,” Richie said quietly, and the waft of his breath when he recoiled was thick with alcohol. “You fucking think… what, that I made it up? So I could trick you? You think I’m that disgusting and desperate that - yeah whatever, I had a fucking crush, I was a kid, it doesn’t make me a fucking animal, you motherfuck-!”_ _

__Eddie clamped both hands over his ears, a childish tactic that only served to make Richie angrier. “Leave me alone,” Eddie said, and his own voice sounded hollow and internal through his blocked ears._ _

__Richie spat something else, and turned and stormed up the stairs, all knees and elbows like he had been when they were kids._ _

__“Woah,” said Ben, from the stairs a moment later. “What happened? Is everything ok?”_ _

__“Fine,” Eddie said._ _

__“Richie just bulldozed past me,” Ben said, coming down the stairs. “I heard something break-”_ _

__Eddie couldn’t breathe, nevermind speak, so he went to the front door and dragged it open and the flash of cold air against his face only served to make him realise how hot he was. He slammed the front door behind him as loud as he could, juvenile and petty but the rage was making his heart beat so fast that he needed to run before he exploded._ _

__The track was closed, but there was a gap in the wire fence he squeezed through. He hadn’t been on the track in years, and they’d redone the rubber so it was softer than he was used to. It took him a few minutes to get a rhythm, and he stumbled into it more than fell in naturally. He hadn’t run in a while. It was terrible for the knees. He pushed himself harder, and could feel the hot sweat beginning to gather on the small of his back, and cool. The patting pound of his shoes hurt a little, his feet cold in his sneakers. He shook out his clenched fists and kept going. The material was different, but the round of the track was familiar. He could close his eyes and map it out. In his later teen years he’d worn grooves in this track. Heart pounding, Eddie raced the track alone, the moonlight illuminating lightly off the red rubber, messed with clean dust, echoing his shoeprints. After a while he stopped, thinking he was going to throw up, and he stumbled over to the edge of the track, near the communal dressing room and bent over, pressing his shaking elbows into his trembling thighs._ _

___Jesus Christ,_ he thought, apropos of nothing, _ I’m so fucking lonely._  
Instead of throwing up, he sank down his ass on the clay and held his knees. Hot tears joined the dripping sweat of his face and he thought for a minute how disgusting and dirty he was, but there was nothing to be done about it now. 

Eddie made his way to the library. There was no world where he was brave enough to go to the Townhouse and risk running into Richie on the fucking stairs, or join him for breakfast. He’d rather die. The road was dark and familiar. He almost missed a step when he crossed the road, because the kerbs had been redone and were higher than he was expecting. His sneaker skidded off the pavement and he glanced down and caught sight of a quarter, half-buried in the tarmac. Maybe some kids had come along when the path was being redone, and pressed the coin in, giggling to each other until a construction worker had come to yell and run them off.

Richie and Eddie had done that once, when they’d paved the new road out of town, they’d went down to the end where it was fenced around with loose chicken wire, and they’d used a chunk of wood to carve their initials into it. It had been one of the times they’d been together on one of their long walks, one of those days where they’d been getting a little too old to play guns in the Barrens, when the rest of the Losers hadn’t been let out to play yet. They had been taking walks together frequently at that time, tracing the veins of the town like they were searching for an exit and that day they had made it a few miles out towards the farmland, their feet leaving dry little stamps in the dust roads. A sudden hard thunder came when they were on a backroad out of town, and the ground had grown dark with pennies of rain so they ran to the Kissing Bridge and huddled under the roof, close to the wall to avoid the infrequent cars. Richie faced Eddie, halfway through a question and then suddenly he started an energetic impression of Bobcat Goldthwait. It was pretty good. Richie did have days like that, where sometimes he’d be working so fast he’d trip over himself, days that Richie sometimes described by saying “someone’s stuck my brain on wheels again, Eds” but that hasn’t really been one of those days. Eddie had been surprised by the sudden conversational whip, and some instinct or other made him turn to see what Richie had been looking at. 

“Oh,” he said when he saw it. It was scratched into the metallic paint like someone had took a penknife or maybe a key to the wall. He thought for a moment about someone walking home, and being so overcome with a desire to voice their thoughts that they dug their house key out of their backpack and bent to the wall and scratched out, letter by letter the words: 

**Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock**

And someone else had carved in a different hand, something sharper: 

_Eddie Kasbrak likes it_

“They spelled my name wrong,” was all he could think to say. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Raid said immediately and Eddie knew he meant the graffiti itself. “Doesn’t mean anything.”  
“I know,” Eddie said defensively, like Richie was accusing him of having believed it. Richie dug in his pocket, and he unearthed a quarter, and took it in between his fingers like a pen. He nudged Eddie out of the way, his taller body shielding the words. 

He started scratching out the graffiti, the coin making nasty squeaking sounds against the paint. Eddie wanted to cover his ears against it but he didn’t want Richie to think he was a baby so he kept them by his sides. 

“Don’t even bother, Rich,” he said when he saw him struggle, the coin starting to slip out of his clenched fingers. “Besides, they’ll just write it again.”

“Shut up,” Richie said absentmindedly. “I almost got it.”

“Wh- oh,” Eddie said. Richie had dropped his arm enough and Eddie could see the graffiti again. 

He didn’t know what he had expected but it hadn’t been Richie’s instinct. He had carefully scratched out Eddie’s name first, completely disintegrating the paint until there was just a clean, blank, long line under **Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock.**

“Oh what?” Richie repeated, shaking out his hand and letting his cramping fingers unclench. 

“Gimme it,” Eddie said, instead of what he wanted to say, and when Richie held out the coin he’d taken it from his hand gently, the pad of his index finger brushing over Richie’s knuckle softly. 

He did it quick enough that he could get away with it, and yet long enough to feel the soft skin, chilled from the pressure of flesh on metal. “I’ll do yours.”

“Thanks,” Richie said, and he tucked his hands under his elbows, hugging his arms to his chest like he never did as he watches Eddie peel away at the paint, letting the words fall off in chips that floated down to the road. 

Eddie had tried to hand the coin back to Richie, but he had looked down at it, a strange look on his face. “Keep it,” he’d said. “Take a turn at Dig Dug for me.”

Eddie had been strangely touched, both by the gesture and the simple fact that Richie knew his favorite game in the arcade, but he had never taken that turn. He’d kept the coin, tucked into a wooden box of things he’d always kept hidden from Myra, without knowing why. It had been the first thing he’d packed when he’d left, though he’d had to go up into the attic for it. It had held a Bill Denbrough novel, various mixtapes, a single glove with an embroidered S on the palm, a tiny sample bottle of cologne that he’d recognised and not known why - the scent of which he’d immediately known on Ben when they’d hugged at the Jade of the Orient - a Zippo with a heart engraved on it even though he’d never smoked a day in his life. It held a notebook with unfamiliar handwriting in it, and a rough paragraph of a history project, cut off midsentence like the writer had been discouraged halfway through. 

Eddie wondered for a moment if Richie would recognise the coin if he showed it to him, and immediately felt stupid. It was just a quarter.


	2. The Barn

He knocked until Mike answered, irritatingly resplendent in a warm wool robe. 

“Eddie, you ok?” Mike asked, opening the door and pulling him in even as he asked. It was warm inside, and Eddie felt colder going into it, like the temperature difference had finally woken him up. 

“I had a fight with Richie,” Eddie said, and Mike locked the door behind him. His place was a nightmare. Filled with piles of occult books, strange wooden sculptures, towers of crystals and sigils painted on rocks. 

“Are you ok?” Mike asked, as he moved a stack of books off the sofa and gestured to Eddie to take a seat. 

“No,” Eddie said. “I’m terrible. Thanks for asking.”

“Well,” Mike said. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Eddie said. “Bill walk you home?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Walked me home, and then I called him a cab to get back to the Townhouse because I was worried. Man, Ben used to walk Bev home all the time, remember? Joys of being two guys, I guess, you never know who’s walking who home. But who am I telling, Richie used to walk you home all the ti-uhm,” he said and trailed off lamely. “You want some tea?” 

Mike was terrible at being with people, now. Eddie could relate. Still, a terrible sense of guilt washed up through him when he thought of it. Eddie had isolated himself, he’d gone to the city and married a woman who loved him familiarly, and he’d gone out for drinks after work with people he knew from college, and he never spoke a genuine word to any of them. But Mike, Mike had waited. He had stayed in this terrible treacherous town because he’d been keeping guard, keeping watch over people who hated him. He’d been alone, and it hadn’t been his fault. The life, the years he’d sacrificed were unthinkable.

“No, thanks,” Eddie said, and waited a moment, fiddling with the hem of his windbreaker, damp with the late night dew. “Mike, you think we’re gonna die soon?”

Mike didn’t answer for a long moment. He just sank into the couch a little, like he was weighted down terribly. He folded his square hands on the edge of the couch cushion. They had been close, Eddie remembered suddenly. His mother had allowed him to the farm, since the Hanlons were church-goers, and he had clung to Mike for a long time after the fight between Bill and Richie, because he hadn’t known who to side with. Bill had been his best friend for longer than anyone else, but Richie was Richie, so Eddie had tried his best to stay out of it entirely, instead choosing to cycle out to the farm and help Mike with his chores, and then climb up into the loft of the haybarn with him and sit and talk for hours. Even after Richie and Bill had made up, they’d stayed particularly close. Eddie had a vivid memory suddenly, so strong he almost felt warmed by the sunlight on his body. Sitting on the edge of the loft, the smell of farm animals and hay, and each other’s clean sweat from good work, the freeing swing of his feet in the air, Mike’s voice even and rolling like a river beside him, the heat of his work-warm legs swinging beside Eddie’s. He wished he could remember what they’d been talking about. 

“Yeah,” Mike said quietly, and Eddie rested the back of his head against the couch. “Probably. I’m s-”

“Don’t, don’t apologise,” Eddie whispered. “You didn’t do anything except… fucking sacrifice your entire life for this. Don’t ever apologise, don’t apologise again.”

“I know, but…” Mike said, and knit his fingers together. When they were young his hands had been a workman’s, calloused but gentle, but now they were soft, almost frail. “I called you all back.”

“Thank you for staying,” Eddie said, instead of anything else, but it was all he could think of. “Mike.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared,” he said. 

“Me too,” Mike said. He pulled his long legs up under him, and tucked them underneath, like he was cold. 

“Don’t you wanna know why me and Richie fought?” Eddie asked.

“If you wanna tell me,” he said plainly. 

“You know, don’t you?” Eddie said. 

Mike laid a hand gently on Eddie’s shoulder, the weight of his arm supported by the back of the couch. “You told me.”

“Mike,” Eddie said and he couldn’t voice it, he didn’t know how to put words in this huge gnawing unknowable space inside his soul. But they had been close, and in so many ways that was enough, because Mike squeezed his shoulder and responded anyway.

“You were happy,” Mike told him and Eddie turned into his open hug and hid his face in Mike’s soft shoulder, his tears absorbed so quick by the wool of the robe that it was like they barely existed at all. 

Mike insisted on Eddie staying close when he could pull himself away. He’d brought him a pair of flannel pajama bottoms that were comically huge on Eddie but smelled soft and warm and like family. Mike made him drink a full glass of water, then turned out the lights. Eddie lay beside him in his little double bed and tried to remember the last time in his life he’d felt truly loved. 

Laying beside Mike felt natural. He’d never had a brother, except for the Losers. They’d done this hundreds of times, as teenagers, Eddie would bike out to the farm and spend the evening with Mike and his family. He’d help Mike with his chores, usually watering the animals, or feeding them, or collecting eggs from Mrs Hanlon’s small brood. The Hanlons always had a place set at the table for him. He’d been so embarrassed the first few times, the way he always had been when another family had invited him to eat with them: so certain it was rude of him, but Mr Hanlon had known, had ignored his excuses and told him he’d earned a meal after working on the farm. It hasn’t been true, some part of Eddie had always known that whatever light chores he’d done were easier than anything they’d pay somebody to do, but it was a good enough reason to join them. He’d bike out there in the afternoon, after running whatever chores his mom wanted, and help Mike. He’d gather eggs in a little basket Mrs Hanlon had made out of honeysuckle, feed and water the animals and when they were both done, he and Mike would go to the barn with whatever fruit was ripe enough on the trees or bushes, and climb one handed up the ladder with their haul nestled into the bottoms of their T-shirt’s turned out like baskets. 

They’d go to the edge, where there was no wall, only a wide open rectangle for shovelling hay through, and sit on the edge, looking out over Derry. When they’d tire of that, or more likely, they’d get sore from sitting and talking, they’d go back to Mike’s house and one of Mike’s grandparents would bully them into washing up, and usually about this time he would hear one of Mike’s grandparents on the phone with his mother. Mrs Hanlon first, usually, and she had been so good at talking to Sonia, she’d always known exactly what she’d wanted to hear.  
“-because of how slick the roads are after that rain, I just wouldn’t feel right sending Eddie out,” she’d say, and Mike would elbow him over the sink, his skin slick with soap and grin at him, like it was a secret he shared just with the Hanlons.  
“How about he stays over, the two of them will have an early night, they’re tired after all their exercise,” she’d say, and usually Sonia would agree, and if she wouldn’t, Mr Hanlon would get on the phone, and calm her down, because for whatever reason Sonia respected men more than women. One of them would hang up with a cheery goodbye and a promise that Eddie would brush his teeth well, and when they were done washing up, they’d go to find Mr and Mrs Hanlon, who by this time were usually on their back porch drinking lemonade if the weather was right, and smoking. 

“Goodnight, baby,” Mrs Hanlon would say, when Mike approached her. She’d drop a kiss on his head, and then she’d gesture Eddie over with a tilt of her head. 

“Goodnight, honey,” she’d say, and she’d drop the same kiss onto Eddie’s damp hair. 

“Go on and rest now, boys, you did good work today,” Mr Hanlon would say, whether it was true or not. “Say your prayers, g’night.” 

They’d go to Mike’s room, which all the Losers had helped paint a cheery buttery yellow, and climb into Mike’s twin bed. Eddie didn’t know how they’d ever fit, but he’d always been small for his age, and Mike hadn’t hit the growth spurt that would eventually land him at 6’3” until later. 

“Night, Eds,” Mike would say, and then turn over into his side and go to sleep, like pushing a button. Like turning off a switch, he’d be there, and then he wouldn’t. 

“Night, Mikey,” Eddie would say, and usually fall asleep whenever he heard Mr and Mrs Hanlon’s even, familiar footsteps come inside, and pad down the hall. 

One early summer Mike’s grandfather had taught them both how to check the sheep’s feet. He’d hunkered down on his quarters and penned a sheep in with his strong hands and lifted one of her legs. Eddie and Mike had hemmed in close to look. 

“Gotta check the colour first,” Mr Hanlon said, holding the sheep gently but firm around her ankle. “You gotta check often because if it’s foot rot, it’s very contagious- No, Eddie,” Mr Hanlon had said without looking up. “Not to people. It doesn’t spread to people.”

Eddie had wondered how he’d known, if he’d sensed Eddie's immediate instinct to recoil, or if maybe he’d just known him. He hadn't felt known by anyone in such a long time. 

“I love you, Eds,” Mike said, the next morning when he saw Eddie sitting on the edge of the couch with a vacant expression. 

“I love you too, Mikey,” Eddie said, and then choked. “You know, I don’t even remember the last time I said that to someone and meant it. Isn’t that pathetic?”

“I bet Bev doesn’t either,” Mike said, and Eddie looked up at him in confusion. “I don’t know… Do you think she’s pathetic?”

“What? No, of course not. That’s different,” he mumbled. Bev was a girl. “Bev was… her husband was abusive.”

“It’s not different,” Mike said. He put a little steel kettle on his hob, and the squeak of it against the metal went through Eddie like nails on a chalkboard. “Is it?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eddie said blankly. 

“Yeah, you do,” Mike said. “You’re not stupid, you’re just… It’s not fair that you have to do all this again. I’m sorry you do. But life isn’t fair Eddie, and we might die today, so I kinda feel like I have to push you. Your mom wasn’t good to you.”

“She did her best,” Eddie said, hot in the stomach with something like shame. Nobody was supposed to find out. 

“She was abusive, Eddie,” Mike said. Either Mike knew him, or he was getting better at being with people already, because he wasn’t looking at Eddie, he was pulling little clay mugs out of a cabinet. “I don’t wanna force you, but you knew this already. We’ve already had this conversation.”

“We have?”

“When we were kids. Maybe we don’t know how to phrase it, but we both knew that she wasn’t just a bad mother, she was… she was abusing you.”

“She never hit me,” Eddie said hollowly. “She didn’t fucking touch me, or smack me around, or tell me I was stupid-”

“No, she did something else, though,” Mike said. “Something just as bad. She convinced you that you were weak. That you weren’t strong enough to live any life. She… she moulded you, Eds, into this little boy, who was frail and sick and delicate and you already fought this. You already overcame this. It’s horrible, and I’m sorry, you already dealt with this, and it’s so terrible that you have to do it again, but you need to remember. You need to remember standing up to her. You know you’re not weak.”

“I was sick,” Eddie mumbled. 

“No!” Mike said. “You’re not sick. You weren’t then, either. You’re just… You’re just living the same life, all over again.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly how it sounds, it means that you overcame your mother and you… figured out a lot of stuff, then you left Derry and you forgot it. And you didn’t overcome it again. Instead you married a woman who treated you just like your mom did, because that’s what abused people tend to do. That’s why Bev married her husband. You married Myra for a couple reasons, I think, and one of them was because she treated you like your mom did and you forgot what it was like to be loved by people who didn’t want you to be someone else.”

“What was the other reason?”

“You know it already,” Mike said. 

“You think... “

“You were my best friend,” Mike said. “I was your best friend for a long, long time, even after the Losers came together again, because we understood each other. I need you to remember.”

“Why? Why now?”

“Because I’m afraid. I’m scared that if we go to fight today, that it won’t work because we haven’t changed. IT feeds on our fear, Eddie, and if we go down there, I need to know that you’re going as my best friend, not as some kid I used to know. I need you to remember.” Mike took a careful spoonful from a wooden canister, and dropped it into one of the mugs. He did the same with the other, and then took a different spoon, a silvery metal flash that looked like there was something carved into the bowl of it. He stirred both mugs, one, twice, three times carefully. 

“I am,” Eddie said. “I’ve been remembering since we all came back.”

The tea’s smell filled the tiny apartment, some strange earthy scent, emanating like something almost familiar. 

“Not enough,” Mike said grimly as he joined Eddie on the couch. He planted both of the mugs on the table, one in front of Eddie. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

“What is it?” Eddie asked, but he picked it up anyway. 

“It’s a tea. It’ll help… break down the walls that are left. I don’t know what you’ll remember, but I think it’ll matter. Whatever it is.”

“How do you know that? What if it makes me remember things that are useless? Something that doesn’t matter at all?” Eddie asks, and he was so afraid of the little mug of opaque brown tea warm in his hands. 

“We’re not alone,” Mike said. “In this fight. There’s something here, something bigger than us, and my research leads me to believe that it’ll help where it can. Let it.”

Eddie drank. 

He was so dizzy, the world was shaking around him and for a moment his feet swung freely in the air, out too far and the bottom dropped out of his stomach, but then he planted, and steadied himself. The loft was scratching the skin at the back of his thighs, the unfinished edge threatening splinters below the hem of his shorts, so he scooted forward a little to escape it. 

“Woah,” Mike said, one hand outstretched to catch him. “Careful!”

“I’m fine,” Eddie said. He shook his head hard, and closed his eyes, and suddenly he was behind himself. He turned, automatically averting his eyes from the younger version of himself sitting on the edge, feeling bizarrely like he’d accidentally witnessed something obscene. He saw Mike, the older, more tired Mike standing beside him, and he gasped. 

“Look,” Mike said, gently. He turned and nodded at the younger versions of themselves, who were talking quietly, like they had no idea what was behind them. “We have to look.”

“I don’t want to,” Eddie said, screwing his eyes closed. The loft was rough under his feet, a stray clot of straw caught under his right heel, making him a little unbalanced.

“Look at us!” Mike said, and Eddie opened his eyes and felt cracked down the middle, like a glass sculpture dropped on a marble floor. 

They were in the barn. A younger Mike sat on the edge of the loft in sweated-through dungarees, and a young Eddie sat beside him, swinging his sneakered feet off the ledge. The older Eddie shook his head hard, and covered his mouth, as though he was bizarrely afraid the younger boys would hear him.

“It’s a memory,” Mike said beside him. “It’s ok. They can’t hear us.”

“Mike,” Eddie moaned, his heartbeat fast and troubled. “What is this?”

“Calm down,” Mike said. “And remember.”

He could hear himself talking, and he had never remember his voice being so high, or so cheerful. There was a sweating glass bottle filled with homemade lemonade between the two young boys, and they took turns swigging out of it. 

“...since it’s so different, and it doesn’t even matter, anyway,” Eddie heard the tail of their conversation, and he leaned it, just like Mike did, to hear. 

“That’s what Bill said, too,” Young Mike said, tucking his fingers into the pockets of his denim dungarees. “I figure they’re probably right, and it might be a Derry thing, anyway.”

“It’s hard to tell what things are Derry things, or normal things,” Eddie said.

“This isn’t a normal thing,” Mike said firmly. “My grandpa, he says it’s like when the government brought crack to the ghettos, and then blamed the black people for it.”

“I guess,” Eddie said. “I don’t know. Richie said the same thing.”

“Yeah, Richie’s not dumb.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t it fucking seem weird to you, that the whole government is fucking lying about it?”

“Not really,” Mike said. “I don’t know why it’s weird to you.”

“I guess,” Eddie said. “I just figure we were supposed to trust these people and they’re… They’re killing us.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, not unkindly. “I guess you get used to it.”

“I don’t wanna get used to it. I don’t wanna be fucking… scared all the time, about getting sick.”

“Me neither,” Mike admitted. “I just wish… I dunno, I guess I just wish it wasn’t like this. That’s pretty stupid. But I wish I was older. I feel like I could figure more out, then.”

“Maybe it won’t be like this,” Eddie said. “When we’re older, I mean. Maybe…”

“Maybe AIDS won’t exist?” Mike asked. 

“I dunno, maybe there’ll be medicine,” Eddie said. “There’s always medicine. Maybe in the future it’ll be like polio or something and nobody’ll get it, anymore.”

“Like there’ll be a gay cancer vaccination in school?” Mike laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “But wouldn’t it be good?”

“Yeah,” Mike said quietly. “Do you think there are more people like us in Derry? Like Richie, and me, and you?”  
“There’s gotta be,” Eddie said. “But you’re thinking about someone in particular, right?”

“Right,” Mike said dourly. “But he’s dating Grace Lonergan, and he… He actually likes her. I can tell.”

“Just because he likes her now doesn’t mean he can’t like you,” Eddie mumbled. 

“I kinda feel like it does,” Mike said, quietly. “If Bill _could_ like a girl, why would he like a boy?”

“I bet it’d be so much easier to like girls,” Eddie said. “You could go out together, and not have to worry about standing too close together.”

“We wouldn’t have to trick the others into going with you and Richie to the diner so nobody figures out it’s a date,” Mike said ruefully. “Weirdest moment of my life, sitting in a booth across from Bill, beside you, pretending you weren’t there on a date with Richie and I wasn’t there wishing I was with Bill.”

“It’s dangerous,” Eddie mumbled.

“I know,” Mike said. 

“You have to be careful.”

“I am being careful,” Mike said. 

“I’m just saying. If someone caught me, they might kick my ass, they might kill me, but if they caught you… they’d definitely kill you.”

“I know,” Mike said. “Trust me. If I tried to date a white boy- yeah. I know.”

“Least your family knows,” Eddie said, trying to cheer him up.

“That’s true,” Mike conceded. “Although my Granma is always asking me when I’m gonna ask you to go steady.”

They both laughed. 

“She just won’t believe me when I keep telling her you’re like my brother,” Mike said. “I think she sees you and she knows I like Bill, and she figures I just like skinny little white boys, and she’s like ‘close enough!’”

“It’d be easier,” Eddie said, though he was still laughing at the idea.

“It’d be so much easier! It’s like, nearly a pity we don’t like each other like that, it would make our lives so much simpler.”

“It would,” Eddie agreed. “Pity your type is dumbasses.”

“Pity your type is loud and nasty,” Mike shot back, and they both grinned.  
The loft shook suddenly, and Eddie fell, a yawning hole opened up underneath his feet and he landed hard. Pain shot through his whole body, drawing daggers through his arm and he slammed into the kitchen table in Neibolt house. 

He landed alone, and he’d felt his arm snap, but by the time he’d stumbled to his feet, he was whole. He was in the filthy, damp kitchen in Neibolt house, the smell of damp and decay thick in his nose and his arm panged with phantom pains. 

“Mike?” He called. There was no answer, but a faint scuffling sound from down the hallway. With little else to do, he followed it, taking great care with his steps on the rotted out floor, and suddenly he saw light. He went after it. There was an ajar bedroom door to the right, the light clipping around the gaps. 

He pushed it open quietly, the flaking paint getting caught nastily under his nails. There was a faint hazy light inside, the only window was grimy and filtering the sunlight through in a greyish, sick-looking glow. There was nothing in the room but a mattress, bare, and left on the dirty ground. Eddie gagged, as the smell of it hit him. 

Wormish, damp, the thick smell of infection smacked him, and he covered his mouth and nose with his forearm. Suddenly, the mattress gave a great, writhing heave, as though it was living and Eddie bit back a scream. It split down the middle, long and oval, spilling grey fluid through it in a sickening wave. There was a ripping sound, and a head popped through it, bloodied and furious. 

“Eddiebear!”

His mother’s head stretched out of the gaping line in the mattress, her cheeks pink with effort, her glasses askew. 

“Eddie, what’s wrong with you?” She asked, and the fear was clear on her sweating face. 

“No,” he said faintly, and he wanted to close his eyes, to cover his face but he was too afraid to look away. Even as he watched, his mother’s face morphed, and sweated, and the thick brackish fluid around it swelled up a great wave, and he was suddenly looking at the worried face of Myra. 

“Eddie, you’re not well,” she said, sounding terrified, terrified of him. “Just come home. Come home and I’ll take care of you.”

There was something in her face, something Eddie had always seen in the faces of the women he’d loved, and who’d loved him, he thought, some kind of sick greed, a fierce desire to press him into the shapes they desired, always willing to carve bits off to make him fit. 

_Beverly_ , he thought distantly. Myra’s head shook, her limp hair flying around her, catching and soaking up the filthy fluid. It smacked her in the face, leaving wet dribbles of grey dripping down her powdered face. He closed his eyes and thought about Beverly, about the way she looked at him. No greed. No painful desire to squeeze him down, to make him small. He saw her face, young and pink with exertion from biking with him, her hair flyaway and wild and red, and grinning. She reached over, and clocked him on the arm, a teasing, boyish punch landing on his bicep. Myra fell silent.

He opened his eyes.

Myra was gone. In her place, pushed through the slot was his own young face, grimacing and grey. He watched himself, his hair a tangled mess from being snagged on the ripped edges of the mattress, and the young Eddie grinned at him. Black fluid leaked, pouring from his mouth and he could see himself choke on it, spilling it down his mouth. 

“Hey, Richie,” it said, and Eddie whirled around and saw Richie standing behind him, oblivious, achingly young and trembling in bug-eye glasses, skinnier that Eddie ever remembered him being.

“Wanna play loogie?” Eddie’s head asked. Richie stepped backwards, and didn’t break eyecontact with the face, even as it smiled at him, and coughed out black liquid that was beginning to steam. 

Richie’s back hit the edge of the doorframe and he whined softly, and then Bill, young and strong and bitter opened the door and grabbed Richie around the upper arm hard. 

“It’s not real!” He yelled, and dragged Richie out. The door slammed shut behind them, and Eddie was left alone with himself, watching his face gag and spit out filthy fluid. 

“It’s ok,” The face said. “It’s just a virus.” It vomited out black fluid, thick and hot, so hot it was beginning to steam. It crept across the wood toward him, and then the floor split apart again, and Eddie fell, his stomach swooping. 

The steaming black liquid that had been creeping across the floor towards him followed his fall. He landed on a twin bed, bouncing on the mattress. He recognised the room, the record player taking up the nightstand, the headphones hooked over the headboard, the worn poster of Jimi Hendrix taped up beside an album cover from _Buddy Holly_. Thick black fluid dripped onto the mattress from above him. He looked up, and saw the underside of Neibolt, the ripped, decrepit wooden floor, the edge of the dirty mattress, and as he watched, the steaming black water fell through the gap, soaking into the clean sheets. 

He shook himself, and moved to climb off the bed quickly, but before he could plant his feet on the floor, he was falling again. He landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him. He was back in the hayloft, warm, dry straw digging into his back through his thin shirt. It wasn’t sunny anymore, it was raining hard, wind cutting through the slots in the barn. It whistled hard, making his ears hurt. It had a terrible sound, like a scream. 

“Mike!” He said, catching sight of him through the floorboards. Mike was below him, looking into a corral with a strange expression. 

“Eddie!” He said, after a moment, taking a while to come out of his fog. “Eddie, come home!”

“What?” Eddie shouted. The rain got harder, and louder, and the wind built, tunnelling under his shirt and blowing it around him. 

“Mike!” He shouted, but he’d lost sight of him through the floorboards. He struggled to his hands and knees - the wind was too strong, if he’d stood he was afraid he’d be swept away - and crawled to the ladder. It shook, and trembled underneath his chilled hands, but he held on tight and forced himself down anyway. The ladder felt warm and steady under his hands. 

He landed on his feet with a heavy thump that he felt through his bones, but couldn’t hear over the rising wind, getting stronger with every second. He caught a glimpse of the world through the open barn door, a freezing, grey, sodden wilderness battered by the storm. 

The rain was silver-cold, glinting in the moonlight, and suddenly Eddie saw a flash of orange - three spinning spheres of writhing orange lights. He turned away quickly, his back pressed against the wooden column supporting the loft. It was steady, and surprisingly warm, like it had soaked up the sun of countless summer days and carried it inside. 

“Mike!” He yelled, in case he could hear him. There was no answer, only the howling of the storm, battering the barn. “How do I come home?” 

_When was the last time I felt at home?_ he wondered. He closed his eyes. The storm built around him, hard and fast, like it was ripping the roof off the loft. _Derry_ , he thought, with surprise. 

The wind was strong enough to whip the air clean from his mouth, so he dropped to his knees, and covered his head. The rain lashed through the gaps in the barn so hard it hurt. Eddie kept his eyes closed and thought about the smell of Mike’s soap, the way Bill spoke, proud and strong. The softness of Ben’s laughter, the way Stan’s curls bounced as he jumped into the quarry. Bev’s sharp little fists, always ready for a fight, always knocking against the boys, Eddie included, like she wasn’t afraid she was gonna hurt him. The way Richie scrunched up his nose to push his glasses up. The glint in the sun when Richie smiled during the brief period he’d had braces. The pale red birthmark on his right shoulderblade. The noise of him talking, about anything that came into his head, anything he wanted to say, trying out different inflections, and accents. Eddie had always listened, anyway.  
He opened his eyes.

It was quiet, and grey, early morning light filtering through the curtains Mike had draped over the windows, like he’d been afraid someone would look in and see him. Eddie was sitting in the same position he’d been in when he drank the tea, on the couch, with his head tilted backwards, resting against the back. 

He jumped over to Mike, who was still resting on the couch, a mirror image, with closed eyes.

“Mikey, wake up,” he said, gripping onto Mike’s lax shoulders. “Mike!”

He didn’t answer. 

“Come home,” Eddie said, his grip tightening on Mike. “Mikey.”

His eyes opened, dazed and dark and Eddie gasped out a relieved noise, and hugged him quickly. 

“I was wrong,” Mike croaked. His tongue darted out to wet his dry, cracking lips. 

“What?” Eddie said, pulling back and reaching for the pitcher of water on the wooden table. 

“I thought… I thought the Ritual was…” Mike was trembling lightly under his hand, so Eddie poured out a glass of water sloppily, splashing little droplets onto the old, pale wood. “Eddie, I thought a battle of wills would be enough, I thought if we just believed… But I was wrong. It’s not the ritual, it’s us. We have to stay together.”

“What are you talking about?” Eddie asked.

“We need to go to the Townhouse,” Mike said instead.

There was no part of Eddie that could be convinced to call to Richie’s room to ask him to meet Mike downstairs, so he traded off. 

“I’ll go get Bill if you’ll get Richie,” he offered to Mike on the walk over. Mike’s legs were long enough to eat up the road, and he had to keep shortening his strides not to lose Eddie. 

“Why would I care about Bill?” Mike said, but he was suspiciously guarded and casual enough about it Eddie knew just where to poke. 

“Oh, ok. Yeah, you go up to Bill’s hotel room. You get him. Totally. You go up and knock on his hotel room door and who knows, he might be just out of the shower. Maybe in a towel-“

“I’ll get Richie,” Mike said quickly. “I’ll get him, and Stan and you can get the bees.”

“Deal,” Eddie said with satisfaction. Jesus, he hadn’t heard anyone refer to Bill, Ben and Beverly as the “bees” in decades. It’d started in school with the “b’s”, which had morphed into the bees, then various ridiculous renditions, including a time where they were collectively referred to as “honeybees” then for a very brief stint; “the honeys”. It had met a quick death one summer evening in Richie’s house Stan had stomped in with a dour expression, thrown his backpack on the floor and demanded “where are the honeys?” - which had made Richie laugh so hard he’d almost thrown up. 

When any of them were in a bad mood, Richie had always made a point of greeting the other two as “honeybees!” And then turning to the pissy one dramatically and growling “bumblebee” in what was clearly supposed to be an impression of Optimus Prime. Mostly it had just pissed them off more. 

There was an oblong wet stain on the bar. Someone had cleaned up the broken glass but the stain was still there, soaked in the wine Eddie had smashed into it. He stood in front of it at first, waiting for the rest of the Losers to come down to the main room, but that felt conspicuous, so he moved, hovering between the window and fireplace, unsettled. 

“I found a ritual,” Mike said, when they’d all gathered, Beverly and Ben sinking into the couch, Stan beside them, stiff with worry. Richie sat in the armchair Eddie had stolen yesterday, and then directed a challenging look at him. Eddie pretended not to notice, and leaned over the bar, hiding half of him behind it. Everyone else found seats, except Mike, who stood between the fireplace and the bar. 

“I thought it would work, I thought…” Mike trailed off. He was almost manic, his hands shaking lightly as he wiped them over his jeans. “I found history detailing the Ritual of Chud, an ancient Native rite that people used to fight It.”

He met Eddie’s eyes, a worried expression drawing his dark eyes down. 

“But they died. I thought that we could do it, and be ok, I thought maybe it didn’t work for the Native tribe because the whole power behind it is belief, and I thought maybe they didn’t believe enough. But Eddie and me… we communed this morning and -”

“What?” Bill interrupted. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a thing- we entered a circle and drank a hallucinogenic Native tea, and-”

“You tripped out so now you got a different plan?” Richie said flatly. “Because that’s just a superb idea. Picking our strategy when you’re fucking flying.”  
“I’m not an idiot,” Mike said, cold as Mike ever sounded. “I know what I’m doing. We took the tea and we communed, but we got separated. It drew us off in different directions, and what I saw… I realised it wasn’t going to work. Because the Ritual isn’t the thing that has power. The power comes from us.” 

“What did you see?” Ben asked, turning to Eddie. “If you got separated.”

“I remembered some things. Saw other things that never happened. I just…” Eddie tried to meet Mike’s gaze, tried to find words where none existed. “Mike is right,” he said, even though he couldn’t prove it. They’d been separated after all. But he was certain, anyway. What was the point of remembering, if not to remember how to have faith? 

The hayloft had broken down around him, but he’d been safe inside. The storm had battered the wood, but it never broke, because Eddie had built it with Mike. Not physically, people from decades before had done that, but they had built it just the same; placed memories into every inch. 

They’d spilled homemade lemonade on dry wood, watched it soak in, carved their names into the posts, tied plaits of ivy around the rafters. They had pressed laughter and confusion and their life and bond into every splinter, and it had remained. 

“The ritual isn’t the magic that will kill IT,” Eddie said. “What will kill IT is us. It’s our bond. Our love for each other.”

“Awesome,” Stan said. “What does that mean?”

“We’re gonna go into the sewers in our Sunday best,” said Richie flatly. “And have ourselves a lovely group wedding.”

“I don’t get it,” Bev said.

“Basically Eddie and Mike are gettin’ hitched and their newfound homo love is gonna save us all,” Richie said, so cheerful it sounded like glass breaking. 

“Listen!” Eddie said, louder than he’d meant. “Just… stop, and shut up, and listen.”

“Firstly,” Mike said, counting off on his fingers. They’d stopped shaking, because he was wound up enough to go off on Richie, or because he had calmed down, Eddie didn’t know. “Eddie’s my brother, and no offence, but gross.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said.

“Stop it,” Mike said. “Secondly, that’s the real weapon. We could go down there with a fucking bazooka and blow IT up and it wouldn’t do a goddamn thing unless we did it together. You get me?”

“The weapon is us,” Ben mused. “But if we’re the gun, how do we...cock the trigger? Shut up, Richie.”

“We already did,” Bill realised, before the rest of them. “We already hurt IT.”

“Exactly,” Mike said, relieved and focused. “The first time.”

“Bev’s fence post hurt IT because we did it together,” Mike said. “Richie’s bat worked because he got it to save Bill. Bev got the post to save Eddie. Whatever the weapon is, it’s gotta be something like that, that’s… infused with that… love.”

“It’s like the barn,” Eddie said. “The barn saved me because it was infused with me and Mike. IT could fuck with me, but IT couldn’t get in. But that only worked because it was just the two of us.”

“Exactly,” Mike said. “The two of us could stand it, because we were somewhere important to us. Somewhere we’d charged with our bond. But the seven of us? All that power will be even stronger. Where’s the one place we all were together? Where’s the place that soaked up all of us?”


	3. The Clubhouse

It took a while to find the clubhouse, since none of them could remember exactly where it was. Eventually, Ben tracked across from an old tree he remembered, pushing his steps into the leaves on the ground like he was searching by feel. 

“I think I-!”

There was a loud cracking noise, and the audible smash of a body into hard-packed soil as Ben disappeared. 

“Oh, fuck!” Bev gasped, rushing forward. 

“I found it,” Ben called weakly, through the ragged hole in the roof of it. 

“I’ll probably just use the ladder, if that’s ok,” Richie said, and swung one long leg into the hole, sliding down the ladder with careless ease. ` 

“Oh my God,” Bill said softly, when his feet landed lightly on the floor. The dust rose up around them in a thick cloud, after being undisturbed for so long, and Eddie covered his mouth and nose with his shirt reflexively. They separated, naturally, going to whatever called them. 

Stan touched a little canister marked with Losers Only, and smiled faintly. Eddie sank onto a little crate, resting his elbows on his knees while he watched the others circle the little room, so much smaller than than it had seemed when they were young. Richie was in front of him, looking at a narrow little shelf Ben had carved into the wall for him to keep tapes in. 

“Jesus,” Richie said. “Hey, you think this thing still has juice?” He asked, lifting up a mini boombox by the handle.

“No way,” Ben and Stan said simultaneously. Richie looked over the tapes in the wall, selected one and pushed the pressure release on the front of the radio. He slipped the tape into the empty slot and shut it. Suddenly, it lit up green, and a sharp staticky noise shot out, startling them all.

“Holy shit!” Bev said. “Play it, Richie!”

Richie grinned at her, and pushed the little button, worn almost smooth from years of use. Guitars kicked in first, loud and fierce and then a familiar drum pattern slammed in. _Burnin’ For You_ played, staticky but strong. 

“I loved this song,” Eddie said, almost surprised by the fact. 

“You and everyone who ever lived,” Richie said, but warmly, the only thing he’d said said directly to Eddie all day, and Eddie wanted to pretend it didn’t make him feel better, but he couldn’t hide the relief on his face. 

“Oh, wow,” Bev said. She’d found a black plastic lipstick bullet, covered in dust. She popped the cap off, and wound it up, smiling softly at it. It was a dark, reddish brown, rather sophisticated. “This was the only place I could play around with this kinda stuff for a long time,” she said, sounding distant. She turned to Ben who was hovering nearby and grinned at him. 

“Think it’d still be cute?” She said. She searched around the little collection of things in the beer crate she’d found the lipstick in. She picked up a tiny silver compact, but dropped it fast when she saw what was underneath it. 

“Oh, Bill, look,” she said, picking it up. It was a small, faded drawing in Bill’s childish but talented hand. He joined her, balancing himself on the rafters over the uneven ground. 

“Huh,” he said softly, joining her. It was a black and white drawing, mostly in pencil of her and Ben. In it, Bev was crouched on the edge of a cliff that evoked the quarry, beaming at the drop. Ben was beside her, drawn in soft, rounded, loving strokes, watching her. 

“Yeah,” Bill said quietly. “I guess that’s about right.”

“Hey,” Bill called a few moments later. He was standing in the corner, his hand resting on one of the support poles. “Come look, guys.”

They all joined him, their feet kicking up more dust, that turned soft-light hazy in the sunshine from the open trapdoor. Mike and Stan reached him first, and Stan cracked a full, proper grin for the first time since he’d arrived in Derry. 

“It’s us,” Bill said. 

He touched the wide beam, his fingertips dragging across horizontal notches. “Look how little we were,” he said, and Eddie finally got close enough to see. Horizontal notches, varying significantly, carved deep into the pale wood, and above them, or next to them depending on how close they were to another were their names. 

“Eddie, you were so small!” Richie crowed, crouching down theatrically to peer at the deep score that spelled out _EdDIE_ in shaky letters. 

“Fuck off, Richie,” Eddie said conversationally, feeling the tense atmosphere between them crumble for a moment. “So were you!”

“We were all so small,” Beverly said softly, and a hush fell over them. They stood together, looking at the pole and counting the names. Mike at the top, his name small and neat, followed closely by Stan and his looping carving, only an inch or so difference. Then Bill, who’d shot up young and then grown no more after the age of sixteen, his name big, decisive. Then Ben, and Beverly who’d stuck close in height until their late teens, when Ben had gained nearly a foot in a few short years. Their names were carved close together, filmed over with dust but deep enough to see. Richie followed, his name big and scratchy, but shallower than the rest. Eddie was last, and his was the only name that had been decisively scored under, as if one of them had seen his name, and decided _this, and no more_. 

“This is it,” Mike said quietly, and the rest nodded. 

“Ben,” Bill said. “Can we take this beam?”

“I probably just need to reinforce the ceiling near it,” Ben said, touching it lightly. “I could put another beam beside it, to compensate. I’d have to do that before we could take it. But yeah. No problem.”

The tape in the boombox skipped suddenly, and blared, as though someone had twisted the dial all the way. It stuttered, catching on a line and Paul Simon’s voice stuck on the lyric again and again, 

_“When the papa found out- when the papa found out-when the-”_

“Jesus!” Beverly shouted over the roar of the music, clapping her hands over her ears. “Turn it off!” 

Richie tripped over the edge of a plank, and landed hard on one knee in front of the radio. He wrenched the volume dial first, but there was no change in the sound. He clicked the power button once, and then again when nothing happened. The song skipped again, and Tiffany’s whine blared through the space. 

“It won’t turn off!” Richie yelled. 

“The battery!” Stan screeched, his hands clamped over his ears too. “Take it out!”

 _I think we’re alone now-”_ there was an awful grinding noise, like the inside of the boombox had caught on its own gears and was eating itself up inside. _-we gotta hide what we’re doing - **what would they say? What would they say? What would they say** -”_ repeated, roaring with a staticky blast. Richie flipped the boombox over entirely, muffling the front-facing speakers in the loose clay floor. He dug into the movable plastic slide it its back, to reveal the batteries inside. 

“It’s empty,” he said.

“What?” They all shouted. 

“It’s empty!” Richie yelled. “There’s no batteries!”

“Well,” Mike said, and brought his sneakered foot down hard, smashing the boombox into shards of plastic and ribbons of tape. The sudden silence rang their ears, hurting almost as much as the roar of the music. “...You have shitty taste in music, Rich.”

“It was a mixtape,” Richie defended himself faintly. “I guess I tried to put a song for all of us.”

“Who was the Tiffany for?” Bill asked, shaking his hands out like he was trying to shake off any lingering shock.

“Ben,” Richie said immediately. “Ben loves dance-pop.”

“Remember how much he loved Cher?” Stan said, shakily.

“Hey,” Ben said, his voice a little gaspy, still a little startled. “Don’t ever put that in past tense. I still do.”

Bill sent them to the hardware store, and Stan and Richie took the opportunity to go together, Stan to escape into the fresh air, out of the lingering fright of the clubhouse, and Richie, Eddie thought with faint shame, probably to escape Eddie. They returned an hour later, with tools Ben had requested, and a couple of 2x4s. 

“I’m a real man, now,” Richie said, as he clambered down the ladder in a surprisingly good John Wayne impression. “Christ, Stan, don’t drop it!”

“I’m holding all the weight,” Stan said dryly, and it was true, he was balancing a canvas bag on the top rung of the ladder, but still taking the load of it. 

“This post is sawn lumber,” Ben said, as he examined the tools. “I’m pretty sure because that’s what I could get my hands on the easiest back then, but it just means that it’ll come out of the joint pretty easy, but it’s gonna be heavy, it’s about six feet tall, and pretty thick. It’s not a stud-”

“Unlike me,” Richie and Bev said, simultaneously. 

“-so once we get the beam moving it’ll come easy-”

“Unlike me,” Richie and Bill said, this time and Ben buried his head in his hands. 

“Anyway,” Ben said. “This one is just additional support, just stick-framing. We’ll put in a replacement column, right beside this post to take the weight, then we can pop out the original.”

It was sweaty work, made harder by the fact that none of them really knew what they were doing except Ben. They ended up getting in each other’s way more often than not, but eventually Ben had the joint the post was resting on cracked apart. He’d had to saw open the joist, since age had caused the wood to seize up. 

“I’m gonna push it,” Ben said. “Be ready to take the weight.”

Eddie and Bev had been getting in the way more than anything, too short to reach the fulcrum, so they were pushed aside, in favour of the taller Losers. Mike and Richie at the front, bracing the post, Stan at the right, guiding it into position. They’d all looked at Bill uneasily when he moved to mirror Stan, holding the pillar at the left, but nobody would tell him to get out of the way, even though he was shorter than Eddie. 

Ben pushed the top of the pillar, easing it out of the bloated joint and there was an awful cracking sound from above them. They all tensed for a moment, Richie and Mike holding the pillar still in case they triggered another groan, but the weight seemed to settle on the replacement column, and Ben gave another heave, popping the bottom of the post out of the foundation slab. Richie grunted faintly as the weight of it settled in his and Mike’s outstretched hands, and little beads of sweat popped out across Mike’s nose. 

“How the fuck did you get this down here?” Bev asked, her hands outstretched like she was going to grab the pillar single-handedly if it fell. 

“I swear it wasn’t this heavy when I first installed it,” Ben insisted, not for the first time. “I just rolled it,” he said.“Was pretty easy to just kick the posts in, and then I used a pulley to drag them vertical.”

“Alright,” Bill said, as soon as they’d eased the pillar to the ground. It lay face-up, their names neatly lined up like flower markers. “No way we’re getting this up out of here. I hope everyone brought snacks because we’re gonna be here a while.”

“Wow, Bev, you’re so butch,” Richie said, when he saw Beverly loosen her belt and use it to hold the flat chisel she’d been carving with. Beverly automatically cocked her hip, lifting the only hammer like a burly man on a bodice ripper cover; which made them all crack up. Eddie laughed quietly, hiding it by looking at his own pale flat of wood. 

“Thanks, Rich,” she said, dropping the hammer back onto the old drinks crate it had been resting on. “God, you know I missed you. All of you.”

“Me too,” Bill said. “I know that might sound silly, because I couldn’t remember you all exactly, but there was something there, still.”

Eddie thought back quietly to one icy winter a few years ago when he’d gone out for a walk, and happened across a storefront. He’d gone in to look for a gift. Myra had been upset with him over something he couldn’t even remember now, and he’d thought a present, given with a meek apology would soothe her, and keep him out of her sights for long enough for them to get past her bad mood. 

He’d walked into the store, shaking off the light dusting of snow before he went through, and wandered over to a display of women’s scarves, warmly coloured for the season with mulberries, chocolates and wines most prominent. He’d picked up a soft cashmere scarf, a fire red colour and looked at the label, which had read _Marsh Designs_.

“I couldn’t have named any of you,” Bill said, in the soft, captivating way he spoke when he was being direct. “I could’ve walked past you on the street, but still. I think the way we grew up together, what we faced… they made us part of each other.”

Eddie hadn’t bought the scarf. He dropped it like it was hot enough to burn, and picked out something else, something he couldn’t remember now, because the quickest way to keep things quiet, and easy was to go to his wife and present himself with apologies, and excuse, and then when she’d held whatever it was over his head for long enough to be satisfied, he’d present her with a gift, or a table for two at a restaurant, and promises. 

Because that would make her soft towards him for another while. Myra’s softness was like his mother’s, warm and sticky-sweet like molasses, something he could sink into entirely and never be found. Something so sweet it ate away at him, like bacteria in the mouth. They had loved him, both of them, in their own way, Eddie thought, but it was a different kind of love, closer to obsession than affection. Not like the Losers. 

Myra would love him by encouraging him to be silent, encouraging him to visit the doctor, take his vitamins, scheduling him regular optician and dental and medical visits. But Bill, he thought of first, because he’d been the first best friend he’d ever made. 

He’d been the precedent for love outside his mother, clean from the bonds of familial ties. He had loved Eddie by not thinking about it too much. He’d accepted him, they’d accepted each other as young siblings close in age accepted each other, with an assumption that there was no other choice. 

Bill had always assumed that whatever one of them was doing, they’d be doing together, forever along for the ride, always at each other’s side. He’d loved Eddie by treating him like he was as strong, as brave, and as culpable as anyone else. 

Bill had loved him best by holding him to standards that Eddie could meet. His mother had loved him by keeping him cosseted, and clean, and well-turned out, by keeping him warm and quiet and swaddled, like a newborn babe. 

Richie, he thought abruptly, had loved him, too. Loved him in a way that was harder to describe, because it was so ingrained. They’d been friends before either of them had really realised, they’d buried themselves into each other’s thoughts like it was natural. 

Richie had loved him best by teasing him, because his stupidest jokes had always made Eddie shriek with laughter, and Eddie had loved him best by always laughing, no matter how terrible the punchline. The worse, the better. Eddie had laughed himself hoarse at sleepovers because of Richie’s worst jokes, the ones he only told because Eddie liked them, even as the other Losers had rolled their eyes, or smacked him with stolen couch cushions they’d been sleeping on. 

“Hot pan,” Richie had said. The faint scent of vanilla that Ben’s house always smelled of, soft and floating in the living room. All sleeping on couch cushions, stolen pillows, makeshift beds next to each other, half-overlapping. “One sausage turns to the other, says “Fuck, it’s hot in here”.”

Eddie had grinned at him, waiting, even as the other Losers had grumbled, bleary with sleep. It’d been so dark Eddie could only make out Richie’s outline, sitting up, between Stan and Mike’s cushions, his hair a tangled halo around his head, his glasses glinting in the moonlight. 

“Other sausage turns to him,” Richie said. Eddie nodded at him, to encourage the punchline to get out fast, because he could see Stan gearing up to take a cushion in his hands and smack it into Richie’s head. “Screams _‘ahhh! A talking sausage!_ ”

Eddie had hurt his stomach from laughing, smashed his hand over his own mouth so his breathless squeaks wouldn’t wake Ben’s mother. They’d been fourteen, and it might have been the first time he really understood that pain wasn’t always world-ending, sometimes it was just your body whispering _hey, go easy here, we might be in trouble._

“I still love you all,” Bill finished, a firmness in his voice like he was reassuring them there was no other choice, still that older brother assuming that there was no other option but to love. “Isn’t that funny?”

“It’s a riot,” Richie said, flicking the useless edges of his own chunk of hardwood off with the edge of his utility knife. “A real howl.”

“What, Richie?” Stan pushed, pressing Richie like he always could, safe by dint of being Richie’s closest friend. If Mike and Bill were Eddie’s brothers, Stan was Richie’s, Beverly his sister, like Ben was shared between them, too conscious of favoritism to align with any one person most. “You didn’t miss us?” 

Richie was readying a joke, they could all tell, but Stan cut across him, like only he could. “I missed you. All of you,” he said, too earnest for Richie to bear. 

“Alright,” Richie said, twisting his knife, carving a little divot in a scrap of wood. “What do you want from me, I missed you all, I loved you, whatever. I never disagreed, why are you on my case?”

“Calm down, you walking persecution complex,” Stan said dryly, and Eddie was always so impressed by Stan’s ability to be wholly genuine in his earnestness, and yet use it like a weapon to dismantle Richie, like a fisherman might use a knife to shuck an oyster, levering enough to force it open. 

“Asshole,” Richie said, without heat. “I take it back, I didn’t miss you,” he said, which made Stan laugh like he was delighted. 

“Are we gonna talk, or what?” Richie asked, cornering him in the bar later that evening. They’d arrived back at the Townhouse late, the summer sun setting behind a bank of thick grey clouds. 

Covered in dust from the clubhouse that had stuck to their sweating skin, they were all filthy. Eddie just wanted to take a shower. 

“Because I know I’m always the one pushing, or whatever, but if we’re gonna depend on our super-special friendship or whatever for the fight then we should probably-”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie interrupted, hot with embarrassment, and sweating faintly in the small of his back already. He could feel a flame burning on his face, embarrassment coiling up because Richie was right, he’d always been the only one brave enough to push. 

“I’m sorry I… smashed a glass, and I’m sorry I yelled at you and I said terrible things to you, and I’m just- I’m so sorry.”

Richie was still for a moment, and he regarded Eddie with a faint pink sheek across his cheeks. 

“I said shitty things too,” Richie said, and Eddie shook his head. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all, my mouth ran away with me.”

“No, you… you didn’t do anything wrong. And I need you to know, it’s not… It was never about you, y’know? I was mad, but not really at you,” Eddie said, more than he’d planned to say, but it poured from him naturally. 

“You still don’t remember, do you?” Richie asked, his fingers twitching. He dragged the hems of his sleeves down over his hands.  
“No,” Eddie admitted. “But… I believe you.”

“Yeah?”

“I believed you the second you said it. That’s why I was so mad.”

“Why were you-?”

“Because I was just… I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I had spent years as a kid learning about everything, and then I moved away and I just forgot. Everything. Everything I had ever known. It feels like I spent years learning how to read and then one day, I just woke up and it was like I’d never learned at all.”

“You just...forgot?” Richie pressed. 

“I didn’t fucking forget being gay, idiot,” Eddie said, hotly. “I repressed it. I forgot that I had already _had_ the coming out to myself dilemma. Anyway, what about you? You out there in L.A just living your fucking truth, or what?”

“Nobody knows,” Richie said. “I was never really closeted to myself, just… everyone else. I didn’t repress it, so much as just pretend it wasn’t true. Nobody, in the whole fucking world except you knows.”

“And Mike,” Eddie said reflexively.

“Sorry, what?”

“I mean, I didn’t like, out you or whatever, sorry, I just mean. We told him. Apparently. When we were teenagers.”

“Oh,” Richie breathed out, surprised. “W-why?”

Eddie squirmed a little, looking around the wide berth of Richie’s broad shoulder to see if anyone else was around, to search for an excuse to breakaway, but before he could, Richie spoke. 

“He’s gay, too,” he realised.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Eddie said, an automatic response, like a reflex. 

“But he already told me,” Richie pressed. “I just didn’t remember until now.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Eddie admitted. “You know, I forgot all this shit, we both just… forgot all this shit we already went through, that we already figured out. I’m too old to still be figuring shit out, Rich.”

“Nah,” Richie said. “I think we’re ok.”

“We’re a fucking mess,” Eddie countered.

“Well, yeah, obviously. But I feel like if anyone has an excuse to still be figuring shit out, it’s us.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Eddie said, the anxiety in his head quelling to a soft faintness. 

“Besides, we’re not that old,” Richie pressed. “I still get acne breakouts sometimes,” he said, in that cheerful, abrupt tone that always made Eddie shatter into laughter. 

“We’re alright,” Richie told him, and Eddie looked at him for a long moment. 

“We are,” Eddie agreed. 

“But do be aware, if I find out this whole thing has been an elaborate ruse to throw us all off your trail because you and Mike are secretly in love, then I’m gonna be pretty upset,” Richie added, and Eddie snorted. “I know that’s your brother, and everything, and like; mine too, but I don’t wanna have to end up trying to seduce Bill to even it out- Oh, fuck!”

Eddie looked around them quickly, to make sure nobody had wandered in during their conversation. “Shh!”

“I forgot! I mean, I remembered! Oh, fuck, poor Mike,” Richie lamented. “Bill is married.”

“Yeah,” Eddie grimaced. “And I’m not convinced someone who wears jorts could like men.”

“Hey,” Richie defended. “You know, just because I dress like this doesn’t mean I’m straight.”

“Oh, shit,” Eddie said. “You mean you don’t dress like that to throw people off the scent?”

“What? No. This is just what I... wear. Do you?”

“Yeah, obviously!” Eddie said. “You think I wanna be in dad jeans and a fucking windbreaker? Because I like it?”

“...Uh…”

“If I could, I’d wear nice things. Like the new Fendi fall line,” Eddie said, in a quiet tone that was almost dreamy. “Balmain sweaters. Those ready-to-wear black straight leg Jacquemus trousers… But this is what men wear.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. It just is. Because-”

“Because you’re pretending to be straight?”

“Well,” Eddie trailed off, at a loss. “Yeah.”

“But like. I’m gay. And I dress like-”

“Like a muppet, yeah.”

“Cool. Thank you. Whatever. Do you see my point?”

“I guess. I mean.”

“I think it’s ok to like fashion,” Richie said, gently. “Or clothes, or whatever. I don’t think it has to be something so scary.”

“Hmm,” Eddie said. It was too hard to voice. Richie was right, it was ok to like fashion, or to be a gay man who loved clothes, but in an abstract way. It was fine to be clean and fashionable and really, Eddie supposed what he meant was being _visibly_ gay, to be a man that you could see on the street and think ‘yeah, he must be gay’, to be so easily clocked, to _want_ to be visible, but for everyone else. Not for Eddie, never him. That kind of carelessness, that kind of strength, that kind of bravery was for everyone else. 

“I mean, let’s be real, I’m nobody to give anyone advice, but-”

“It’s not so much advice if we’re figuring it out together, though,” Eddie said. “Right?”

“Right,” Richie said. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” Eddie said and paused a moment, lost for words. It was so strange and yet familiar, refreshing like a dip in cool water to speak his mind and have someone listen. There was something wondrous in being able to talk and be listened to. In being honest, and make little sense and convey feelings more than facts and still know that someone was listening and not just listening, but understanding. “I missed you.”

“Mm,” Richie said, like it was strangled out of him. “Honestly? I missed us both.”

Yeah, Eddie thought, absolutely. He had missed himself too, he’d missed the person he had become. He opened his mouth to tell Richie this, and caught his eyes on his lips. But just then, Bev came down the stairs, her sneakers squeaking against each step. 

“Richie-oh,” she said when she caught sight of them both. Eddie almost grimaced, wondering if Richie had told her about their fight. Probably. He almost certainly hadn’t told her the reason behind it, Eddie would put money on it. No matter how much he loved her, trusted her, there had always been a part of Richie too afraid to out himself. 

Eddie didn’t think Richie was afraid that the Losers would stop loving him. He thought he was probably more afraid that things might change. When they were teenagers Richie wouldn’t tell because he was scared that the Losers would treat him differently. Eddie knew this, in the same way he knew that Richie loved his parents, but didn’t quite understand them. 

He knew that fear that had only teased at his own subconscious because for Eddie, much of the fear of being gay was the dirtiness of it. The risks, the diseases, the inevitable death. It had taken him years to realize he wasn’t dirty, and he wasn’t sick, but for Richie, Eddie knew, he had never really felt like he was dirty. He had felt like a predator. So much of his terror stemmed from feeling like a monster, like something that couldn’t be controlled.

Bev cast a look between them both and then at the bar behind Richie and Eddie understood her fear immediately. 

“What’s up?” Richie asked and the casual tone of his voice must have calmed her because she relaxed immediately.

He had told Eddie some of this fear, he remembered suddenly, once when they were in his bed. He could remember it so clearly, so suddenly vividly that he was shocked he could have ever forgotten. He could feel his face burn bright red, and he hoped that Bev and Richie were too distracted talking to notice. 

It had been one of the later times, when Eddie had had it in his head that if they were going to keep doing this they might as well go all the way. He’d been deeply terrified, and yet strangely resolute. He had decided that if he was going to do it, he might as well do what scared him most, what had been most perverse, what he had been bone-deep most afraid of doing in case it turned out he liked it. They’d been tangled together in Richie’s bed, under the covers because they both liked the comfort of an extra layer of privacy. They had been making out for so long that Eddie’s neck ached from looking up. He’d pulled one of the pillows down and eased himself up to give them a more even height and Richie had panicked. 

“Where are you going?” Richie had whispered urgently, and Eddie pushed his own pillow up higher than Richie’s, and lay on it to counteract the height difference. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he’d insisted. “You’re just too tall.”

“Oh, sorry,” Richie had said automatically and then blinked at him. “Wait, how is it my fault you’re the same height you were at ten?”

“Fuck you,” Eddie had said conversationally. “Hey, Richie?”

“What?” Richie had said, but he was distracted because he was trying to realign them the way they’d been before Eddie had moved. 

“Do you wanna like,” Eddie had paused, and felt faint dregs of intense shame begin to stir in him, rising up like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. “Have sex?” 

“Are we not?” Richie had asked and Eddie had recognized if for the deflection it was, but he’d barreled on regardless. Richie put his hands on Eddie’s hips and pulled him down, so they were entwined with each other’s thigh between their legs. 

“You know what I mean,” Eddie had pushed. “Real sex.”

“Feels pretty real to me,” Richie had said and slipped his thigh up higher to grind into Eddie. “Definitely tangible.”

“Richie!” Eddie had whispered hotly. “You know what I mean. Do you wanna or not?”

“Not,” Richie had said and it had felt strangely like a physical rejection, like Richie had shoved him away. 

“Oh,” Eddie had said and the hurt was so clear in his voice that he could hear it himself. “Ok, we don’t have to,” he’d said quickly, like he could erase the moment of bare vulnerability by sounding casual enough now. But Richie had looked at him and sighed. 

“I don’t like how it feels,” he’d mumbled and Eddie had gasped at him. 

“You’ve done it?” He’d asked, feeling betrayed. 

“Not with someone else-“ Richie was quick to say. “Just alone.”

“Oh,” Eddie had said, and thought about it. “You didn’t like it?”

“No I just… the thing is-“ Richie had cut himself off like he was afraid. Eddie had known how to soothe him then, and he’d pulled the covers up higher around their shoulders and slipped in close to Richie to make him feel safe, private. 

“That’s not what I want,” Richie had said brokenly and Eddie had looked up at him in confusion. “I mean. When I jack off I don’t think about getting- you know. So it’s not fair to think you should have to do it when I don’t want to.”

Eddie had stayed silent for a moment because he’d been paralyzed by a stunning shot of lust, like he’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. “What do you think about?” He’d asked and his mouth was dry. 

“It’s gross,” Richie had said, and avoided Eddie’s eyes. Richie did this sometimes, where he presented something with his true feelings and didn’t filter it at all, and still had such certainty that he would be rejected. It had almost always made Eddie feel bewildering sure that no matter what the issue was, he would do anything to fix it. “You can tell me,” he’d said and Richie had tucked his head into the gap between Eddie’s shoulder and the pillow. 

“You’ll think I’m creepy,” Richie had told him and Eddie set his mouth in a thin line, and decided there and then that it didn’t matter what he said, Eddie wasn’t going to think it was creepy. 

“No I won’t,” he’d promised and Richie had muttered it so quietly that it had taken a moment for Eddie to register it. 

“Sometimes I think about fucking you,” he mumbled. 

“Oh,” he’d said and immediately felt guilty for the second thunderclap of lust that shot through him because Richie was still burying his face in the pillow like he was ashamed. “You can.”

“...what?” Richie had said and he’d sounded panicked. 

“You can, if you want,” Eddie had repeated and Richie had grown hot all over, like he was burning up in his arms. 

“You can’t say stuff like that,” Richie had told him and Eddie had blinked at him. “You can’t… you don’t have to let people do stuff to you,” he’d said hotly and it sounded like he was ashamed. 

“I don’t,” Eddie had said. 

“You let me!” Richie whispered harshly. “You can’t just let-“

“Stop,” Eddie said. “Calm down. Think about what I said before we started talking about this.”

“Yeah but… I thought you meant-“

“I didn’t. I meant that sometimes I think about it too.”

“Oh,” Richie had said. “You don’t think I’m like...a freak?”

“Do you think I’m sick?”

“No!”

“Me neither,” Eddie insisted. “Cause I’m not, and neither are you and it doesn’t make you like… a creep to wanna… do it.”

“Maybe next time,” Richie had said. They’d pulled the sheets up high around themselves and Richie had hidden his face in Eddie’s shoulder and they’d traded touches. Richie had cried again after, for the first time in a long time and Eddie had kissed him, gentler than usual. 

Eddie left Bev and Richie talking by the bar, and he forced down the memory as he made his way through the foyer, trying to forget how it had sounded when Richie had mumbled what he wanted all those years ago. When Eddie went up to his room, he met Mike coming down the stairs. 

“Hey,” Mike said, and immediately pivoted on his heel to walk Eddie up. It was inexplicably refreshing and calming to settle back alongside Mike, like finding a limb long lost. 

“Hey,” Eddie said. “Come up to my room,” he said and cast an intense look at him. Mike immediately smiled at him, like he was trying to diffuse a bomb. 

Eddie shut the door fast and wheeled around to pinch Mike hard on the shoulder, right where he had a sensitive nerve spot and he yelped. 

“Why were you upstairs?” Eddie asked urgently, feeling abruptly, almost nostalgically like a teenager again. “Talking to Bill?” He drew out the name in a tease so whiny it could have passed for one of Richie’s Voices. 

Mike hushed him, waving a hand at him quickly like Eddie had a snooze button and he was just searching for it. 

“Don’t talk so loud!”

“Jesus, he’s not Superman, he can’t hear us through the fuckin’ wall,” Eddie said, but he softened his voice a little anyway.

“Yeah. We were talking,” Mike admitted. “He’s having some trouble.”

“Oh, unique,” Eddie said. 

“Shut up. Did you know he and his wife are getting a divorce?” Mike said, and then immediately sounded guilty. “He said it’s not a secret, but still, don’t tell anyone else.”

“Shut up!” Eddie said reflexively. “Really?”

“Yeah, he said that...” Mike trailed off, like he was searching for the best words. “That things hadn’t been good in their relationship for a while, and it was like...I think he’s blaming himself, because he said something about how he hadn’t been fair to her because she didn’t really know him. But I don’t know how he could blame himself that she didn’t know him.”

“Well, we can’t all be Stan,” Eddie mumbled. “But yeah,” He mused. “How can he feel guilty, he didn’t even know himself.”

“Exactly,” Mike said. “Anyway-”

“Why’d he tell you?”

“What?”

“Uh,” Eddie made a knocking gesture on Mike’s forehead, tapping his knuckles on his head. “I hear an echo-”

Mike immediately kicked him, like it was a reflex, his foot whipping out and clocking Eddie in the back of the knee. Eddie buckled, but even as his leg went from under him he was laughing. 

“You just donkey kicked me! Nobody has done that to me in literal decades-”

“I’m so sorry,” Mike choked out, through hard laughter. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“Liar,” Eddie said comfortably. “Anyway, my point, before I was so rudely interrupted is; why did Bill only tell you about this?”

“What are you talking about?” Mike said guardedly. “Because we’re close. We’re friends.”

“Oh, Mike,” Eddie crooned in a voice that sounded nothing like Bill, sprawling himself across the wall. He put his hand on his collar like he was about to strip, and Mike rolled his eyes so hard it almost looked like it hurt. “Ooooh, I’m so glad to see you, and did you hear I’m single now, and oooh you got so tall and handsome oooh-”

“Oh, you’re so close, but you said the wrong name! Since you clearly were talking to Richie,” Mike interrupted, looking goddamn pleased with himself.

“...I’m gonna kick your ass,” Eddie said. 

“You can try,” Mike said pleasantly. 

“I’m gonna… kick… your ass,” Eddie repeated slowly, and advanced. Mike held up both hands defensively, and bit his lip to keep his laughter in. “You come into my temporary home, you donkey-kick me, you lie to me, you fucking roast me-”

“You can’t say roast! You’re forty!” Mike yelled, and dropped one hand behind him to grab the door handle. Eddie saw him go for it and lunged, but Mike was too quick, and he slipped out into the hall, laughing. Eddie ran downstairs, ready to corner him again and get some actual details about what Bill had said. As the room door slipped shut behind him, he heard a noise so faint he didn’t even register it as important. It was a soft creaking sound, followed by a fainter pat-pat noise, like someone had opened the window from the inside and climbed out onto the sill. 

“Ok,” Bill said that afternoon, pizza boxes strewn about the room. They had all retired to his room to talk, and eat, and plan for the night ahead. “I think we should all go get some sleep. Rest up, we’re gonna need it. Meet in the foyer at seven, ok?”

Some of them fidgeted, some nodded solemnly but only Ben spoke. 

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said. “I love you all.”

“Oh nice going, Haystack, now we’re definitely all gonna die,” Richie said from where he was shoved in between Stan and Bev. 

Eddie went back to his room, shut the open windows and closed the curtains. He stripped off his clothes and went to lay down, but he couldn’t get to sleep in the unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar sounds and smells. Instead, he remembered. Not the first time, but the first of something else. 

“Hey,” Richie had said when Eddie let himself into his bedroom. His backpack was heavy, and he stuck his thumbs under the straps to alleviate the ache on his shoulders for a second. “Are you good?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, and kicked shut the bedroom door behind him, making the Jimi Hendrix poster taped to the back of it flutter in the breeze. “Did you get the stuff?”

“Uh, kinda,” Richie said and looked embarrassed. He pulled out the top drawer of his nightstand and let Eddie look in. 

“Richie,” Eddie said. “That’s ...baby oil.”

Richie winced visibly and Eddie stared at him. “I couldn’t go to the pharmacy, ok, I’m sorry, I didn’t have the balls. But this will work! We just can’t use it with condoms, so it’s ok for today but… I’ll have to-“

“Grow some balls?” Eddie suggested. 

“Yeah,” Richie plainly. “Hey, would it be weird to drive to Bangor to buy condoms?”

“Probably,” Eddie admitted. “But you do what you want. Are you ready?”

“Oh, right now?”Richie asked, running a hand over his head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, right now,” Eddie said. “We had this conversation, I thought we agreed that we’d do it when your parents aren’t home.”

“Right,” Richie said. “Yes. Yeah. Are you?”

“I think so,” Eddie said, and dropped his backpack off his shoulder to collide with Richie’s floor. 

“Did you-“

“Yeah, I mean they sell nitrile gloves at the fuckin’ hardware store, that was never the issue,” Richie said and he pulled back the cover on top of his bed as he talked. 

“Is that a towel?” Eddie needed to know. 

“Yeah? To stop the oil from making a mess- why, you hate it?”

“Kinda.” Eddie admitted. 

“Ok,” Richie said and pulled the fixed sheet loose. He laid the towel underneath and the sheet on top, so it was hidden. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said with relief. “Way.”

They both waited for a moment, looking at each other and then Richie said:

“Do you want a drink or something? I think there’s coke in the fridge.”

Richie hadn’t offered Eddie a drink in years, if Eddie was thirsty usually he just elbowed Richie until he paid attention to him. 

“No, I don’t want a drink,” Eddie said. “I wanna make out, ok?”  


“Never heard of a ‘Make Out’ before-“ Richie started, but he cut himself off when Eddie pushed him, letting him land on his back on the sheets. “Oh, ok.” The awkward tension dissipated quickly as soon as Eddie got his mouth on Richie’s, thankfully. 

“Hey,” Eddie said, pulling back from Richie for a moment. “Are you scared?”

“Yeah,” Richie said and Eddie laid his hand on his rib cage gently. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. 

“Of what?” Richie asked, and he lifted his arms for Eddie so he could pull his T-shirt up over his head.  


“I’m scared- I think I’m scared that I won’t like it. And then what? Or that I will like it and I’ll be like… weird.”

“You mean gay,” Richie said dryly and Eddie flinched. 

“Shut up,” he said, instead of answering. “What are you scared of?”

“Oh,” Richie said. “I guess I’m scared that I’ll push you and you might not want to do it.”

“Push me?” Eddie repeated, slightly mindless over the careless reveal of skin. 

“Yeah,” said Richie. “I mean...I don’t know.”

“I asked for this,” Eddie said and Richie turned bright red. 

“I always worry that I’m making you do stuff you don’t really wanna do, and you’re doing it to make me happy,” Richie admitted and Eddie pulled back to look at him. He wished he had the words to explain that Richie wasn’t predatory, no matter what his fear told him, but he didn’t. Instead he gave him assurance, not as good, but it would have to do. 

“You couldn’t make me do something if you tried,” he told him and Richie made a soft little noise. “Wait... you like that?”

“What?” Richie said. “No, shut up.”

“You can’t boss me around,” Eddie said and Richie gave a light distinctive shiver. “You do like that! Why?”

“Shut up,” Richie said reflexively and then sighed. “I don’t know!”  


“Hmm,” Eddie said thoughtfully and considered aloud. “I guess it makes sense. Because you get scared of pushing me… maybe it’s nice for you to be reminded that you’re not nearly as bossy as you seem to think you are,” Eddie said, and he knew he was on the right track when Richie’s cock twitched against his thigh, where he had slotted their legs in together. “What is it, Rich?” Eddie asked. 

“I don’t know,” Richie moaned, his hands clenched tight on Eddie’s hips like he was too far away, though they couldn’t have been closer. Eddie pressed himself forward, forcing Richie into a long slow grind, because Richie got stupid when he was excited, and Eddie wanted to know. 

“You... like to remember that I’m here ‘cause I wanna be?” Eddie tested and Richie inhaled sharply. “Or is it that you like to be reminded that if anyone’s gonna make decisions about how we fuck, it’s gonna be me?” 

Richie swore under his breath, and Eddie could feel a warm, damp patch on the hip of his shorts, where Richie was already leaking through his boxers. 

“That’s it, huh,” Eddie said softly, and Richie shivered again. There was a kind of wonder in it, in what they were discovering together and Eddie let his instinct roll Richie over, flat on his back. 

He supported his own weight on his elbows and looked down at him, a hot wave of fierce affection rushing through him. Richie let him, without hesitation. The power felt suddenly deeply arousing, and Eddie pushed down hard into the cradle of Richie’s hips. 

“Wait, stop,” Richie gasped and Eddie lifted his hips off him automatically. He clenched his eyes shut quickly and took three quick, deep breaths. 

“Rich-“

“Wait. Don’t talk,” Richie ground out. His eyes opened but he kept them averted, turned away from Eddie. Eddie stayed quiet, his body lifted off Richie’s hips carefully. 

“Ok,” Richie said after a long moment. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, keep going,” Richie said and Eddie grinned at him. It had been a brief speed bump in the beginning, but they’d both been quick to learn when to ease off, give Richie a breath, and it had been perhaps the one thing Eddie had never made fun of Richie for. Not out of pity, or because it was embarrassing, but because of a deep sense of comradery that stemmed from the first time Eddie had a panic attack when Richie had asked if he could blow him. Richie had never made fun of Eddie for it, and so Eddie had made a silent promise to himself to never make fun of Richie’s hair trigger, even lightly, even if Richie probably wouldn’t mind. Richie probably had better jokes about it than Eddie, but Eddie had long ago learned that even if Richie was laughing about something it never meant it didn’t hurt him. 

They stripped each other’s remaining clothes efficiently, in a way that Eddie now regretted, like they were clearing what was in the way. 

“Oh, fuck,” Richie said aloud once his hand was on Eddie’s hip, his fingers cupping the swell of muscle. 

“You’re barely even touching me,” Eddie said and Richie grinned at him. 

“Still,” he said, and bravely slid his hand down, letting his fingers line up with the curve between his upper thigh and ass. “I am, though.”

“Calm down,” Eddie said dryly, though his own heart was beating stupidly fast. “You’ve touched my ass more by accident.”

Richie beamed at him, a sudden delighted smile, like he had just discovered something. He inched them both to the right, so he could hold Eddie by the hips and roll them both, setting Eddie on his back. 

“Don’t touch my dick,” Eddie said suddenly, abruptly alarmed. 

“What? Why?”

Eddie blinked at him, and Richie turned to drag the bottle of oil over beside them. It rolled into the dip they created in the bed, the cool plastic surprising against his overheated skin. 

“Hey,” Eddie hissed. “I don’t make fun of you for popping wood the second I boss you around, you’re not allowed to make fun of me.”

“For what?” Richie demanded, delighted. “Not the bossing part, that’s only ever pissed you off. Is it the manhandling?”

“Shut up.”

“It is!” Richie sat up on his haunches like he was about to do a bit. The sunlight caught the faint hair on his chest, starting to darken and thicken as they got older. Eddie kicked him in the side. 

“It’s -oof, alright, calm down. Hey, for real - did you tell me not to touch your dick because you’re worried you were gonna lose it if I fingered you and touched your dick?”  
Eddie winced automatically at the lewd language, but let out a sigh when Richie began gently squeezing his hip, like he was massaging him. He nodded, because it was easier than speaking out loud and Richie exhaled deeply. 

“That’s really hot,” he told him and Eddie squinted up at him. 

“It is?” Eddie asked. Richie looked up at him, eyes big and rounded through his thick glasses. He rested his face on Eddie’s chest to watch him. 

“Yeah,” Richie said. “So how do you wanna do this?”

“I think, uh,” Eddie started, and changed his mind twice. “Wait, come here,” he said and dragged Richie up to lay beside him, on their sides so they faced each other. He hitched his leg over his hip, high up enough that his thigh slipped into the divot of Richie’s waist. “Like this?” He asked, and took Richie’s hand gently, and placed it between his legs. Richie swallowed hard. 

“This is good,” Richie told him, and pulled the sheet over them both, tucked up around their backs for safety, privacy. He slipped his hand back down where Eddie had first put it and stroked gently in a sensitive line along Eddie’s inner thigh. He jumped, and then buried his head in Richie’s chest, hiding his face in the dark gap between his pillow and his skin, where it was warm and smelled like Richie’s musky deodorant. 

Richie nuzzled the top of his head and Eddie took the hint and lifted up for a kiss. 

His mouth was relaxed, his kiss intense but gentle and Eddie cupped his hand around the back of Richie’s head, not to pull him, just to hold him. Richie petted his inner thigh gently, his thumb drawing long slow strokes along the inside. Richie slipped one of the gloves on, making a thin snapping noise as he dragged it over his sweating palm. Eddie fumbled behind himself for where the bottle had slipped barely underneath his back and he pressed it into Richie’s hand quickly. 

“Yeah?” Richie asked and Eddie opened the cap while he held the bottle. 

“Yeah,” he said and tipped the bottle up slowly, letting a thin stream of oil coat Richie’s fingers. 

“Hey,” Richie said. He slipped his slick hand down between Eddie’s legs, and stroked the oil between his thighs lightly. He looked for a long moment as though he wanted to say something, and slipped his hand up higher. Eddie looked up at his face, from where he’d been fixated on Richie’s big hand in between his thighs in the darkness under the sheets. 

Richie was so big everywhere, and he hadn’t finished growing. Eddie remembered reading once that people keep growing until they were twenty-one, so Richie had another year to go, another year to stretch up tall, to widen in his already broad shoulders. He wondered what Richie might look like in a year. He’d gotten darker, broader, less boyishly defined in the past year or two, gotten a tiny round to his stomach, thicker darker body hair, and Eddie had noticed. Richie might be even bigger in a year, might be able to lay over Eddie like a blanket, and cover him, might be able to pick him up, his thick legs supporting a broad, big body.

“What?” Eddie said, distracted when Richie pulled his other hand up and petted the divot between his collarbones gently. 

“Never mind,” Richie told him. 

When he touched him, he did it so lightly that Eddie didn’t flinch, though he had thought he would. Not for the first time, Eddie thought in a distant, undefined sort of way how nice it was to do this with Richie, who wouldn’t hurt him. Who would make fun of him about the things that didn’t hurt, and never mock what did, and who always touched him like he was waiting to be reprimanded, who only grew bold after Eddie had showed him again and again that he wouldn’t scold him for touching. 

It was strange to feel slick there, and he thought bizarrely of lotion, and the way it felt on his face before it sank into his skin, wet and warm. He let out a muffled noise, and hitched his leg up higher on Richie’s waist. 

“Are you good? Should I stop?” Richie asked, sounding vaguely panicked.

“No, no,” Eddie said, a little more breathless than he’d wanted to. “It’s ok, keep going.”

“Not sure it’s supposed to just feel ‘ok’,” Richie said dubiously, but he continued. He parted his fingers gently, letting the slick pads stroke over the rim and Eddie smothered a noise into his chest. 

“Is it good?” Richie asked, sounding surprised and pleased, like he’d been given a little gift. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie admitted. “It’s kinda weird but it’s like… sensitive,” he trailed off, not willing to admit the intensity of the sensation. He was afraid that half of the feeling was the pleasure of being wrapped up in Richie’s warm arms, the smell of his familiar bed, the sensation of his body pressed close to Eddie, like he couldn't bear to be parted. 

“Go on,” Eddie encouraged him, and Richie paused for a moment, to reopen the bottle and drip more oil onto the fingertips of the black glove he wore. 

“Sure?” He checked, and Eddie nodded, although fear and nerves were giving him goosebumps. 

“Just go slow,” he reminded, and Richie nodded, surprisingly solemn. He expected it to hurt, and so it did, but not nearly to the degree he had feared. It burned for a moment, but was quickly eased by the slick of the oil, the warm soothing feeling of being gently massaged. Eddie felt one of his fingernails snag on the dip on the top of Richie’s shoulder and only then did he realize how tightly he was grabbing him, how deeply he was sinking his nails into him. 

“Sorry,” he rasped, and Richie looked up at him, blinking like he was dazed. 

“What?” He said, and Eddie shook his head. 

“Never mind,” he told him. Richie slipped his middle finger in deeper, up to the knuckle, and then stayed still. Eddie gripped his shoulder hard again, and breathed heavily into the small gap between their faces. 

“Eds?” Richie whispered. “You ok?”

“Wait,” Eddie said. The intensity of the feeling took a long moment to resolve and until it did it felt like nothing but sensation. Eddie didn’t know how to characterize it. It felt huge, and intimate and yet somehow minor. Like it hadn’t been the ordeal he’d been thinking of. Richie stroked his rib cage gently while Eddie breathed, his free hand ungloved and warm on his skin. He paused for a moment and slowly swiped his thumb over Eddie’s right nipple. His thighs clamped down on Richie’s forearm so abruptly that it had to hurt. 

“Sorry!” Eddie gasped, and Richie shrugged, the edge of his glasses getting caught in the pillowcase. He had to take a moment to calm himself, and spread his legs enough so he wasn’t gripping Richie’s wrist so tightly. “I wasn’t expecting it,” he trailed off. 

“This?” Richie asked and cupped his rib cage again. His hand was so big, and sweetly awkward that he could reach Eddie’s chest easily, and he petted the line under his pec lightly. It was a faint, gentle touch, but the different sensation awoke his skin quickly and he arched his back a little, to get his thumb where it was more sensitive. Richie acquiesced immediately, of course, and gently rubbed the pad of his thumb in little circles around his nipple, catching it every few moments. 

Warmth coursed over his body and he reflexively tugged the sheets up high over them both, and then laid that hand on Richie’s stomach. He was starting to get wide as he inched towards his mid-twenties, his stomach was no longer the hollow cup it had been, it was soft and convex, lightly dusted with black hair. Eddie could feel the way he held in his stomach automatically, and he looked up at Richie for a moment, and drew his hand downwards slowly until he stopped tensing. 

Richie was so hard, and it was a funny kind of relief, because Eddie hadn’t realized how nervous he’d been that Richie wouldn’t like it after all until he was shown how much he did. He wrapped his hand loosely, and stroked him because Richie was already leaking, and he didn’t want to push him too quickly. Instead he touched him because he wanted to, because of the way Richie moved his hips to chase his hand, the way his eyes rolled back when Eddie squeezed lightly, and rubbed the pad of his thumb into his precome. 

Slowly the sensation of having something inside resolved itself, and he encouraged Richie to move. He did, gently, like he was afraid of hurting him. He drew his hand back to add more oil, and when he slipped inside again Eddie parted his thighs further, feeling warm and wet, surprised by how it felt. Richie petted inside him, his finger gentle and coaxing and Eddie pressed his hips downward for more sensation. When he couldn’t get it, he swallowed his pride and said:  


“Another, Rich, please,” and Richie looked dazed again. He drew his middle finger almost fully out, just the barest tip inside, and then he slid back in with his index and middle fingers pressed close together to ease the stretch. Eddie grimaced anyway, and held his breath, waiting for the burn to ease. 

“Hey, breathe, dummy,” Richie told him. He inhaled deeply, and hitched his leg back up from where it had slipped down around Richie’s hip. 

“Move,” Eddie breathed, and he did, moving only his fingers, he cupped him gently and stroked, keeping his hand still so Eddie could grind down on it as he wanted. 

“Oh, fuck, wait, right there,” he said before he knew he was speaking. He rolled his hips forward, trying to recapture the movement that had sent fire licking up his spine. Richie dragged his fingertips over the sensitive little ridge again and Eddie moaned out loud, and then buried his face in Richie’s chest. 

“Is it good?” Richie gasped. “Oh, fuck, don’t-“ He dropped his other hand and grabbed Eddie’s wrist, to pull his hand off his cock quickly. A tiny pool of precome spilled from the top of the head and Richie closed his eyes firmly. He held Eddie’s wrist with one hand, and rocked his other hand gently, petting over his spot. Eddie made a shocked, pleased noise when he did, and tried to muffle it in Richie’s chest. 

“Oh, come on,” Richie moaned. “I don’t wanna come yet, quit it.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Eddie mumbled into Richie’s skin. His fingers were slick, and when Eddie tensed the thigh that was hooked over Richie’s waist he could get them even deeper, the stretch no longer quite so painful, but satisfying. 

“Ugh,” Richie said helplessly. Eddie shoved his free hand down, to hold onto Richie’s wrist urgently. He held his arm exactly where it was, the pad of his thumb clamped over the flat plane of his wrist. 

“Come on,” Eddie said nonsensically, and squeezed Richie’s wrist desperately. Richie buried his fingers in deeper, and Eddie let out a deeply embarrassing moan. He bit down on Richie’s collarbone, digging his teeth into the pale skin insistently. Richie muttered something and Eddie loosened his mouth long enough to say ‘what?’ and then pressed his forehead against Richie’s clavicle, softer than it used to be, easier to rest his head on. 

“I’m so fucking hard,” Richie admitted, and Eddie gripped him tighter. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. He was, but more urgent and pressing was the slow waves of pleasure radiating out from between his legs, deep in his pelvis. His legs were starting to tremble, but he held fast onto Richie’s wrist, encouraging him. “But don’t stop, ok?”

“You’re shaking, though,” Richie said breathlessly, and Eddie panted into his chest. 

“Yeah, don’t stop,” he repeated mindlessly, and he pulled his hand up quickly, and licked his palm, and wrapped it around Richie again, but he shied away. 

“No,” he said and Eddie stared at him stupidly, and slowly removed his hand, confused. “I don’t wanna come yet,” Richie said. “I wanna watch you, ok?”

“Ok,” Eddie slurred, and he put his hand on his bicep instead, the friction of the thick hair a familiar, pleasant sensation. He could feel himself clenching down involuntarily, like his body was drawing Richie’s fingers against the sensitive spot, and he realised he was panting. He shut his mouth quickly, but Richie hadn’t seemed to notice, too transfixed on Eddie. 

“You’re shaking so much,” Richie said mindlessly, and Eddie realised he was, his thighs were trembling, bumping up against Richie’s arm repeatedly. Even his hands were shaking where they were clenched around Richie’s left wrist and right bicep. Eddie swore loudly, and then like a wave, all of his held breath went out of him and he collapsed against Richie, burying his face into his chest. 

He forced himself to let go of his wrist where he’d been clamped down on him, riding his hand, and he gripped Richie’s back instead, trying not to dig his nails in again. 

“I think I’m gonna come?” Eddie slurred and Richie shuddered, and went so hot all over Eddie could feel it, like his blush was radiating out from him. 

“I’m not even touching your-” Richie whined and cut himself off. His free hand went down quickly, and he gripped the base of his cock tightly and held his breath for a moment. 

“Fuck, don’t stop-“ Eddie rasped mindlessly, and realized he was drooling out of his panting mouth into Richie’s chest. He hadn’t seemed to notice. Pleasure was building, but not how he was used to, either through furtive fumbles under sheets, or the quick eager way Richie used his hand, instead it was waves of clenching pleasure, building to coalesce.

“I won’t stop,” Richie swore, and then he slipped his thumb from where it had rested under the curve of Eddie's ass and petted over his perineum. The slick pressure from both sides, the deep fullness from Richie's fingers, and the way Richie was panting like he was the one being touched was all so much sensation, and Eddie could feel himself peak, his orgasm washing through his pelvis in deep satisfying waves. He was aware he was making a ridiculous noise from where he had buried his face in Richie’s chest, but he couldn’t stop, even to catch his breath. 

He looked down at Richie’s forearm, the strong muscles still moving gently, like he was coaxing Eddie through his orgasm, the line of black low around his wrist from the glove, shining slick from the oil. He had a narrow band of redness around his wrist where Eddie had held him tight. 

“Richie,” Eddie gasped, as another wave of intense pleasure forced him to clench down on his hand. When he opened his eyes, Richie’s jaw was tight, his face turned slightly into the pillow and he thought for one bizarre fearful moment that he was upset. Then, he looked down and saw Richie’s cock drooling out come, without being touched and he gripped Richie’s shoulders harder. 

“You like it,” he panted and Richie gave one last late shiver, swallowing back noises. 

“Yeah, dumbass, it’s literally what I jack off thinking about,” Richie rasped, his hands trembling slightly. He slowly drew out, just after Eddie clenched down, easing out during the waves of contractions. Eddie sighed heavily into Richie’s chest, still trembling all over, and he heard the snap of the glove as Richie removed it, tossed it to the trashcan, and hugged him. 

“It was when I said your name,” Eddie said, and he looked up at Richie, his hair sweaty and big, his glasses askew. 

“So?” Richie said and Eddie blinked stupidly at him. 

“Why?” Eddie wanted to know. 

“Shut up, Eddie.”

“Really.”

“I don’t know, it’s just hot, shut up.”

“Yeah, but why?” He needled. “Is it true, did you actually-“ he made a dopey jerking-off gesture, and Richie looked at him like he was the dumbest thing alive. 

“Is that not cool?” Richie asked and Eddie grinned at him, feeling lazy and relaxed, and soft. 

“It’s cool,” he promised him. “You’re not- well, it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not what?” Richie asked, and suddenly he wasn’t so relaxed, the muscles in his arms were tight around him. 

“Nothing,” Eddie tried to brush off. 

“No, tell me,” Richie insisted. “I’m not what?”

“You’re not the only one,” Eddie said and Richie stared at him. 

“I’m not the only one you think about?” He asked and Eddie rolled his eyes. 

“Stupid. No-“ and Richie looked for just a moment, devastated. It was such a jarring moment, triggered by careless words, that it shocked Eddie. “-you’re not the only one of us,” he clarified and Richie looked at him. 

“Oh,” he said after a long moment and Eddie could see him casting about for a joke, his eyes moving from side to side like he could fish it out of the air. “So it’s ok?”

“You think about what you want,” Eddie said. 

“Yeah but like… are you ok with it?” Richie wanted to know and Eddie blinked at him, wondering if they had been supposed to ask permission. 

“Are you ok with me thinking about you?” Eddie asked and Richie inhaled sharply. 

“Yeah,” he said. “But that’s different.”

“No,” Eddie said. He slipped his feet in between Richie’s calves, warming them up. “It’s really not.”

“What do you think about?” Richie wanted to know and Eddie squirmed. 

“Oh, c’mon Rich, it’s embarrassing,” he admitted and Richie wriggled in closer to him. “You don’t wanna know.”

“I told you,” Richie said. “And it was embarrassing.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t- that’s really what you think about?” Eddie asked. “You really think about just… touching me?” He was too exhausted to get hard again, but it was close. 

“Well,” Richie said. “Yeah. Is that weird?”

“No,” Eddie assured him. “It’s a little more selfless than what I usually think about,” he said, and Richie moved, he flung one hand back to root in the top of the drawer in the bedside locker. There was a faint crinkle of plastic as he yanked out a pack of wipes and opened it with one hand. Eddie was almost absurdly touched when Richie cleaned him up thoughtlessly, while he talked, like it wasn’t care taking, but something to be expected. 

“Tell me.” Richie urged and Eddie sighed. 

“Ok,” he said. “But you have to know, first that it was based off a scene in a book I read once, and so you can’t make fun of me for it.”

“Oh fuck,” Richie said. “You get off to Charlotte’s Web?” He started and Eddie grabbed one of the small cushions that were strewn around the bed and smashed it into Richie’s chest. “I’m just asking- is it the legs or the tying up-“

“Shut up!” Eddie insisted and put the pillow over Richie’s face, where it slipped off harmlessly after a second. “It was a romantic fucking scene, so shut up!”

“Ooh,” Richie said, But he sounded intrigued. 

“They’re a couple,” Eddie said. “And -I’m not gonna rehash the whole plot, ok, just know that the scene has the girl in her bed on her hands and knees and the guy is behind her,” he spoke quickly, like he could rush through the embarrassment of it before it could catch him, but he couldn’t, the hot wash of deep embarrassment rose through him. “And it’s like… it’s very fucking flowery language, ok, but basically she’s got her thighs together and a pillow in between them and she just - and he fucks her and it’s- she is like grinding on the pillow and that’s it, that’s the whole thing but like,” he thought for a moment, trying to describe the scene. 

It had been written in a flowery, purple prose but still when Eddie had read it, it had been like a lightening bolt of revelation: that sex might not have to be dirty. Perhaps even more groundbreaking for him, it read in the girl’s point of view, and she hadn’t thought of it as violating, or painful, she had only enjoyed it. “The first time I read it I was really relieved because I thought it was exciting because it was straight sex,” Eddie said and Richie blinked at him. “But then I realized I didn’t like it because it had a girl in it, I liked it because I was identifying with her, you know?”

“Oh,” Richie breathed and for a moment Eddie thought he had upset him, but no, he was just stunned. “That’s what you think about- that scene?”

“Well, yeah,” Eddie said. “But with us.”

He looked down reflexively and then back up to meet Richie’s eye. 

“You’re hard again,” he said and Richie looked down at himself like he was discovering it too. 

“Do you do it - with the pillow?” He wanted to know and Eddie could feel himself turn a brilliant red. 

“Yeah,” he muttered. He wasn’t sure how to explain it, that for a long time it had felt like he was doing something wrong to touch himself, and it was easier to turn on his stomach and slip the firm little cushion down, held between his thighs, covered up carefully with his blankets. 

“And you think about me?” Richie asked and Eddie snapped at him. 

“Didn’t I say that already?”

“Yeah,” Richie said, and he looked dazed again. “You think about me fucking you?”

“Shut up,” Eddie said reflexively, deeply embarrassed. “I already said I did.”

Richie finally sensed that Eddie was reaching the end of his boundary with honesty and he pulled back. 

“I think about you all the time,” Richie breathed, like it was a secret and Eddie looked up at him, confused. 

“I know, you said,” Eddie said.

“I mean-" Richie cut himself off abruptly, and Eddie didn’t chase him. “Yeah, whatever,” he said brightly, too cheerful to be real. “Congratulations on finding a way to make a straight love story gay.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said dryly. “I’ve always been inspired by you.”

“As you should be,” Richie said, and grinned at him, a little more real. 

There was something there that Eddie hadn’t realized at the time, but did now with years of hindsight as he sat up in a cold hotel bed. He hadn’t questioned it at the time, but there was something in the memory that made him feel hollow and sad, because at the time Eddie hadn’t said anything. 

Richie had assumed that the couple in the book were in love. He had called it a love story. They hadn’t been, but Eddie had never thought to say that. He hadn’t thought to say a lot of things.


	4. The House on Neibolt

The house stood in faint fog, reflecting little in its broken, grimy windows. Bill opened the front door. It swung open too easy, gliding on its hinges and yawning a dark passage for them. He held his stake close in his left hand, and they followed him, as always. 

“Stay together, if you can,” Bill said. “But no matter what... get to the well.”

“Oh,” Richie said quietly, when the door shut hard behind them, and the bang drew his eyes. Posters were stuck to the peeling paint, dogeared at the edges and filthy, like they had been up for years. They had Richie’s face on them, and Eddie caught only a flash of MISSING before he gripped Richie’s arm. 

“It’s not real,” Stan said. “Just keep going.”

Richie turned, a grim look on his face and nodded. The hallway gave a faint shimmer through the air, like the throat of some hungry beast shivering in anticipation. It was dim inside the house, the setting sun barely illuminated the creaking wood through grimy sheets thrown over the windows. They moved forward. Through the hallway was the kitchen where Eddie had broken his arm as a kid, and after that there was a set of stairs leading down to the old well. 

If they reached there, they could climb down into the well like they had when they were young. There was fear, a thick, unnatural terror, but at the same time Eddie could feel something else, something he hadn’t felt the last time they were in Neibolt. It was some kind of energy, because they were all together this time. 

They made it through the hall, and Bill creaked open the wooden door that had last time led to the kitchen. But now, it showed another long, dim hallway, dirty and stinking of damp, and far too large to fit in the house. 

Eddie reached back to touch the stake he had slipped through one of his belt loops, to comfort himself at its existence. Bill hesitated, and just then, there was a noise so loud and shrill that for a moment Eddie thought of a train whistle. 

Suddenly Stan shoved himself forward, elbowing his way to the front of them, with sweat breaking out around his hairline, and he gasped; “Patty?”

“STAN!” A woman’s voice screamed, and a chill ran down Eddie’s spine. 

“No!” Richie shouted, but Stan burst forward anyway, through the door, towards the voice. “Stan, don’t-!” He followed him, and Eddie saw for a moment, his hand close around Stan’s wrist and begin to tug him back towards the group. But the door slammed shut, smashing into Bill’s arm and trapping Stan and Richie on the other side. 

“Richie!” Bev yelled, grabbing the handle and wrestling with it futilely. “Stan!”

“Bev, move!” Ben said, leaning back and he threw himself at the door. It creaked under his assault, but held fast.

“Stop,” Bill said. 

“They’re alone!” Eddie shouted, and waved frantically at Ben to either continue, or get out of the way. 

“They’ll be gone before IT lets us through,” Bill said grimly. “They’ll go somewhere else. We need to find another way.”

“What other way?” Mike asked, and then grabbed Eddie hard, his hand frantic around his upper arm. “Upstairs!” He realised. “Through the hole Eddie fell in!”

They had no way of knowing if it was still there, but something about the idea felt right. Eddie had shed blood there, had dripped his life into the dry wood, and he felt a strange draw towards it. 

They made it halfway up the stairs before IT came for them. The sun dimmed, like it had been swallowed, and the sudden blackness made them all freeze. Eddie’s shoe clipped painfully off the next step and he almost lost his balance. Then, he felt hands on him, gripping, and he almost screamed, before he realised they were steadying him. 

“Stay still,” Bill whispered urgently, and Eddie held his breath. The darkness was so complete he couldn’t tell the difference when he blinked, only knowing his eyes were open by the feeling. 

“Don’t m-”

Abruptly, a wild orange light lit up the stairway, so bright and cold that it felt like acid on his eyes. Eddie clapped his hands over his face, to cover his eyes, and he felt faint soft tendrils trickle over his cheek. Something so silky it felt like water, like a ribbon, or a satin collar ruff. 

His eyes adjusted quick, and when he could finally tear his hands away from his face, and looked at the stairs, he was alone. 

“No,” he moaned, so overcome for a moment that it was impossible to wrestle back his terror. His heart beat so fast in his chest that it was hard to hear anything else, only the thick plummy pounding in his ears. He pinched himself savagely, his nails squeezing his wrist hard enough to break the skin. He saw little tiny beads of blood draw close to the surface and he stopped. 

“Guys?” He called, knowing it was useless. “Bill?” There was no answer. And there was nothing else to do, no retreating now, only forward to the maw in the floor. Time moved so strangely as he forced himself through the hallways, that he couldn’t tell for how long he’d been in there, searching through endless rooms and dusty halls to find the right one. 

Somehow he knew he’d find if he kept searching. He’d always had an unfailing sense of direction. He could do it. But it felt endless, and each room held something new, some new horror. He found himself in a small, strangely oval room, flush with pink furnishings. It was cold inside, and smelled like mothballs and rotten meat. There was nothing in the room but a single window and a strange ball, as tall as his hip, a sickly peach colour and shining softly, like it was liquid inside. He got closer to the window, the only source of light, covered over with bright pink cloth. It was dim inside the room, but he wouldn’t pull the cloth down, because shadows moved behind it. 

Perhaps he would have seen trees, and the outlines of birds in the sky. But the shapes behind the cloth were too large, and they looked indefinable. Some were long, and angular, like two-legged spiders walking, and some were huge enough to blot out the light completely. Eddie tore his eyes away, though curiosity raged in him. It would be so easy to pull down the fabric. To see what was moving behind. 

His fingers closed over the ends suddenly, and the feel of it shocked him out of his trance. It was almost slick, like it had been dipped in oil, the weight of it unpleasant. He snatched his hand away from the fabric in disbelief and then turned away from the window quickly. He scrubbed his fingertips over his jeans. 

The ball was harder to see, cast in his shadow as he blocked the light from the window. He didn’t want to turn his back to it, but he was trapped between the ball and the window, and he didn’t trust himself to move away from the curtain again. There was a door at the far side of the room and Eddie ran towards it, but when he tried to grab the knob, it moved under his hand, pulsing like something living. 

He swallowed a yelp, and drew his hand back as quickly as if it had been burned. A sound from the ball. He turned quickly, and drew the stake out of his belt loop, holding it like a weapon. His hands were shaking so badly that it clattered against the wall once, then twice before he could steady himself. As his eyes adjusted to the room, he could see the ball. It was a strange shape, almost oblong in nature and a plush dusky pink colour. As he watched, he could see little orange lines score across it, like bloodshot veins in an eye. 

Then it made a sound. It was a noise like a beetle opening, but a thousand times louder, and lower. It trilled lowly, and creaked, and as he watched, it began to pulse, strange cracking noises as it snapped into shape. 

Suddenly he was reminded vividly of the farm. Mike sitting beside him, looking glumly at a basket of eggs. Eddie had picked one up, and it had been soft and flimsy. He’d gagged at the strange feel, the rubbery, filmy softness.  
“I think they’re stressed,” he’d said sadly, putting the egg back into the basket. “I tried everything, but they keep laying like this. Something’s scaring them.” 

“Like what?” Eddie had asked, rubbing his fingers over his shorts to get rid of the feeling of the weak egg. 

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “But I came out the other day and there was blood all over, and three chickens were missing.” He had stood up, and sighed deeply. “Maybe a fox,” he’d said quietly. “Something is eating them.”

Eddie abandoned the hope for the far door and he ran towards the first one. The ball began to pop and make strange snapping sounds, and as he gripped the handle, the floorboards underneath it began to creak as it rocked back and forth. He wrenched the door open and found himself in the first hallway, and even as he slammed the door shut behind him, he could see the ball slow its rocking, like it was returning to sleep. 

He ran down the hallway, until he calmed down enough to slow his tread. His sneakers scuffed up thick rolls of dust the deeper he went. He grit his teeth, and then suddenly, the hallway opened up into a huge, rectangular room, defying the laws of physics. It was clear and pale, and there was a patch of ground in front of him that was made of glass, like the bottom of a boat. 

For one strange nauseous moment it felt like Eddie had been scooped into a bottle, placed in by a giant tweezers. He could see through the glass the closer he came to it. It looked like a tiny room, but it was lit so brightly by a nonexistent light source that Eddie had to shield his eyes. It was a strange shape and texture, so pale white, and the glass gave it a shiny, filmy glow. 

It looked like a huge, pale, pupilless eye. He blinked to resolve it, and the colour of the shining floor bounced the light back in a sickly jellylike glow. Slowly, his vision adjusted and a shape came into view, and Eddie was smacking on the glass before it even cleared. 

“Richie!” He shouted, as his figure resolved beneath him. Richie was covering his eyes, hunched down on his knees, like he was shielding himself from the blinding light. Eddie banged on the glass, smashing his fist into it hard enough to hurt. “Richie!”

Richie couldn’t hear him, but the glass wasn’t thick enough to muffle noise, so Eddie bent forward and smacked the glass loudly. He screamed Richie’s name again, so loud it felt like he’d ripped his throat. Richie couldn’t hear him, but when the ringing in his ears from his own screaming subsided Eddie realised that he could hear perfectly through the glass. Richie was panting roughly, like he’d run for a long time. 

He was trembling lightly, and his right wrist was bleeding, with four visible cuts on the top, like he’d caught it against something sharp, or been caught by something sharp. Eddie leaned down and pressed his ear against the glass to listen, and heard only Richie’s rough, sobbing breaths. He pulled back to call him again, opening his mouth like he could find a louder volume if he was just looking at Richie. 

IT was against the underside of the glass. IT perched upside down with its white gloves sticking to the glass ceiling like a spider. Eddie let out a shriek and reeled back, slamming his back painfully into the narrowing wall behind him. 

He met IT’s eyes once, briefly, and saw only pale, yellow emptiness, the limbal ring dark with a circle of a muddy colour like old blood. Suddenly IT’s head slipped back too far on its neck and then slammed forward, driving its huge head into the glass. Eddie was paralysed for a moment, as thin little spider cracks began to web outwards from the impact. He searched the room underneath IT, desperately and caught sight of an entrance that hadn’t been there before. 

Richie was gone. Eddie threw himself to his feet before the glass fractured, and sprinted down the hall, his feet kicking out clouds of thick dust. 

There were two doors on either side of the end of the hall, and when he reached it he hesitated, before he heard the shrill sound of glass breaking behind him. He threw himself through the right door, and slammed it shut behind him. Silence lay thick in the room. He turned slowly, fear making his body seize up in strange ways, his hands held in useless claws, his knees locked like an aged hinge. 

He had to force his feet to move, and when he turned, he found himself in the kitchen, alone. There was a smashed table in front of him, and when he got close to it, he could see tiny drops of blood around the breadth of it and he wondered abruptly if it was his own, left here in this house to rot. 

There was a loud noise from outside the room, so startling that he couldn’t trace where it was coming from for a moment, and panic seized his heart. Footsteps clattered loudly above him and he stared up at the hole in the ceiling that he had crashed through years ago. Suddenly there were shoes hanging over the edge, like someone was sitting on the lip, and then they shoved themselves through. A body landed on the table, glancing off it and landing badly, half-heaped on the dirty floor.

“Richie!” Eddie shouted, and Richie pushed himself to his hands and knees, and then stood up shakily.

“Hey, Eds,” Richie said, and then put his hands on his knees and hunched over and heaved in a great breath. “Oh, fuck. Are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie said, grabbing Richie’s shoulders from where he was hunched. “You gonna throw up? Where’s Stan?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Richie said grimly, but he stayed hunched over. His whole body gave light, repetitive little shivers, like he was close to vomiting and Eddie stroked his back soothingly. “I lost Stan when I got past the kitchen. What about you? Are you hurt? Where’s everyone else?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “We were on the stairs, and then suddenly it was so dark - and I don’t know if IT took me, or took everyone else, but I was...somewhere else. Not this house.”

“Oh, shit,” Richie said, finally drawing himself up to his full height. He shivered still, and when Eddie laid his hands on the bare skin of his hands, he was freezing cold, like he was in shock. 

“Yeah. It was like a maze, there were so many doors-”

“For me too,” Eddie nodded. He slipped his hands up and down Richie’s arms quickly, trying to draw some warmth back into his skin. “Jesus, you’re freezing.”

“It’s the adrenaline,” Richie said, shaking his hands quickly like he was trying to calm himself. 

“I saw you,” Eddie said. “In the little bright room, the one-” He paused, not wanting to creep Richie out by telling him what it had looked like.

“With the graffiti?” Richie asked, shoving his glasses back up from where’d they’d been slipping down the bridge of his nose. Eddie hadn’t registered it at the time, but he realised suddenly that the scrawling pink and red lines around the walls of the room had indeed been words. 

“Yeah,” Eddie said softly. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” Richie said and shook himself abruptly. “Alright.”

“We gotta move,” Eddie said. “The stairs is just past the refrigerator, so we’ll go and… hopefully the rest of the Losers will meet us there.”

“Yeah,” Richie said tiredly. “Ok, Eds. Lead the way,” he said, and squeezed Eddie's shoulders gently. Eddie took his hands, still cold but warming quickly. He rubbed them quickly, pushing warmth into his hands. Then his hands slipped up too far, and grazed over Richie’s right wrist. 

He stopped automatically, afraid to reopen Richie’s cuts, but they weren’t there. His skin was clear, like it hadn’t been marked. 

“But first,” Richie said. “I need to ask you something.”

Eddie loosened his grip slowly, and let Richie’s hands fall out of his grasp. They swung down unnaturally, and settled against his thighs. 

“I need to ask you, Eds,” Richie said. “Do you have a quarter?”

“No,” Eddie said aloud, his own voice surprising him. It wasn’t a response to the question, it was the only natural reaction he could feel. 

“How about a nickel?” Asked the thing wearing Richie’s face. Eddie inhaled brokenly, and tried to step away, but he stumbled backwards, trapped between IT and the wall. 

“Please,” Eddie said. He scrubbed his hands over his jeans roughly, the harsh feel of the denim getting damp from his chilled sweat. As he watched, Richie’s face grew sharper and grey. The hollows under his cheekbones sunk further and further, the divot creating an angular, sickly cast. 

“Or a dime?” As Eddie watched, Richie’s glasses slipped down and fell onto the floor, and a chunk of flesh followed it, splatting onto the filthy floor with a sickeningly wet noise. The leper leered at him, Richie’s face still familiar in the angles of its jaw, the slant of its mouth, even though its nose was gone, rotted through, and the rest of its face oozed with blisters, pulsing with infection. 

“Hell, Eds, I’ll do it for free!” The leper screamed into his face, spittle flying from its mouth, and Eddie screamed too, and then a fierce judder ran up his left arm. The leper’s bloodshot, weeping eyes rolled down to its chest as Eddie’s did, and he was as surprised as it to see the stake buried in its stomach. 

A strangled groan came from its mouth and Eddie turned his face to avoid the stink of its rotten breath. His hands trembled on the stake and he felt the leper cringe, as though it was hurt. Then, it opened its mouth and regurgitated a river of foul black fluid over Eddie, and all he could do was shut his mouth and squeeze his eyes tight, and when he opened them again, he was alone. 

Dripping black, foul vomit, the stake still in his hand, stained halfway up with a strange orange fluid. He stumbled towards the stairs, wiping the stake clean on his jeans. His knees gave out when he reached the staircase, but he was close enough to grab the creaking wooden banister.

He steadied himself on it for a moment, and then finally descended, alone.


	5. The Well

He half-fell down the stairs, and when hands caught him, he raised his stake automatically. 

“Whoa!” Mike said, and Eddie let out an embarrassing sob, and grabbed Mike too hard around the forearm, his nails digging into Mike’s jacket. 

“Sorry,” he said. “Mike. It’s you?”

“Yeah,” Mike said, gripping Eddie firmly around the waist and dragging him towards the well, where Bill and Bev were standing, looking grim. They were each dirtied in their own way, Bill was slick with rainwater, and Beverly’s mouth was bleeding, a long slit down the centre of her lower lip like she’d been punched. 

“Prove it,” Eddie said, at last, the stake still tight in his fist.

“Uh,” Mike said. “Fuck, um ok. Once when we were seventeen, we stole two bottles of Lambrusco from the corner store and you threw up in your own lap.”

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie said and dragged Mike down into a hug, even though he resisted a little, trying to keep his clothes from touching too much of the vomit, and kept his face turned far away from Eddie’s filthy clothes. “Where is everyone?”

“We were w-waiting,” Bill said. “For you. We t-thought…”

“IT pretended to be R-Richie,” Eddie said. “I had to stab it-”

“He’s below, already,” Bev said quickly, and kindly didn’t comment on his gasping exhale of relief. “Stan… IT hurt him, and he couldn’t climb down alone. That’s where Ben and Richie are. We were just waiting on you...you fucking scared us,” she said finally, and squeezed Eddie’s shoulder with a ferociousness that hurt. 

“Wait,” Bill said. “You stabbed IT? What happened?”

“I think I hurt it,” Eddie said truthfully. “IT left me alone.”

“You hurt it?” Bev repeated. “Alone?”

“I think it was… it wasn’t itself,” Eddie said. “It was the leper. And it bled.”

He couldn’t stop thinking about the leper, and more importantly, he found himself terrified in case Richie had seen it. He’d always had such a strange, innate fear that he was some kind of monster, that there was something predatory about him. Eddie remembered talking to him about it, when they were teenagers, and he still wasn’t sure if Richie had ever really gotten over it. 

For such a long time when they’d been together, Eddie had taken over during sex, and he’d thought it was because Richie liked it that way. But then they’d talked a little, and Richie had admitted some of his fear, and Eddie had understood that he’d done that, not because he preferred Eddie to take the lead, and not because he didn’t have his own ideas, but precisely because neither of those things were true. The first time Richie had let himself take over he’d been terrified, and there was a small part of Eddie that was so afraid that he’d never come back from that fear and it would be the end of them. But he had, and that hadn’t been the end. But if he had seen himself turn into the leper, holding Eddie’s mouth open with a clawed hand, rasping filthy words at him… Eddie wasn’t sure Richie would ever be able to forget that. 

The climb down the well was horrifying in its own way, a long, endless black tunnel, like they were climbing down into the mouth of something huge. Near the end of the climb down, figures resolved in the dim, greeny air of the tunnel, and Eddie landed heavily on his feet. He saw Stan first, sitting by Ben with his leg elevated. He was trembling lightly, and his leg was bloody. He reached automatically for a pack he hadn’t worn in years and came up short. 

“Eddie!” 

He turned, and Richie dragged him close, and cupped the back of his neck like he was relieved. Behind him, he heard the sounds of Mike, Bev and finally, Bill as they climbed and dropped down onto the tunnel. The lens in the right side of Richie’s glasses was cracked. Eddie gripped his hand roughly, and shoved his sleeve up. Four clawed lines were scabbing slowly on the top of his wrist. Relief, so sweet it felt like a breath of clean fresh air flowed through him.

“Woah,” Richie said. “You ok?”

“Pretty good,” Eddie said. “You look like…” he trailed off lamely, because Richie looked terrible. His hair was damp with sweat, and his shirt had what Eddie guessed was Stan’s blood crusting the fabric around his chest. His face was red with exertion, and there was grime along his forehead, like he’d fallen, or maybe scraped his face on the climb down the well. “You’ve looked better,” he said. 

“Yeah, this place is not getting a good Yelp review from me,” Richie told him seriously. Behind him Eddie could see, just barely over his shoulder where Bill and Beverly were wrapping Stan’s leg up as best as they could. Eddie stifled a soft, quietly shocked laugh. 

They moved through the tunnels slowly, with Stan leaning heavily on Ben’s shoulder. They alternated helping him, everyone except Eddie. He headed the group, because he’d always had the best sense of direction, even though it made him tremble to be in the front of the pack, where he could be so easily grabbed, or worse still, leading them all wrong. He led them through and eventually, the sound of rushing water led them to a wide cavern. It was an open, damp space, the floor a hard-packed dust, the ceiling going up for what looks like miles. They had barely entered it when they were blinded, sharp orange lights so clear and sudden that they all shoved their hands up to cover their eyes. Eddie heard Richie - right behind him - lift one arm reflexively, offsetting Stan’s balance. He stumbled a little, and Eddie can hear him almost fall before one of them grabbed him. There was a tiny whining sound, like the sound an electrical socket makes when it’s overheating, and Eddie opened his eyes. 

The lights were so bright they almost blinded him, but it dimmed slightly, and his eyes were able to adjust. There was a balloon in the centre of the cavern, growing wide and slick-looking, a bright cheery red so unnatural and vivid that it made him wince. It spread, growing wider and wider and they all moved backwards quickly, unwilling to touch it. He caught sight of Mike dragging Stan back, and they nudged each other behind a stalagmite. It felt as though the balloon was sucking in all the air in the space, drawing oxygen out and leaving his chest tight and hot. Paralysed, he watched it grow, and grow, like some monstrous tumour, and then suddenly, it popped. The noise was deafening, and Eddie’s eardrums hurt with a sharp pain so intense he thought they might have been perforated. The balloon had burst, and thrown red latex around the walls, and even as his eyes focused Eddie could see tiny shreds of it float down unnaturally. There, written on the wall in shreds of the balloon, red and clear, the latex stretched over tiny crags in the rocks:

**WELCOME HOME LOSERS**

“Home,” Eddie muttered, dizzily. Home wasn’t this place. Home was the quarry, sunlight sparkling on the top of the clear greenish water, the sound of bees humming quietly nearby. It was the arcade, stunningly dark inside after the blazing sunshine outdoors, with the familiar plinks and jingles of the cabinets, the smell of popcorn, the dizzy design of the carpet. It was the ice cream parlour where the owner always let them all have more than one free sample, where it was white and chilly and refreshing after running around the Barrens all day, where the countertops shone cleanly. The dark, smoky warmth of the clubhouse, Richie’s music playing nearby, the creak of the swing and the hammock. Home wasn’t the house his mother had lived in, an ominous, oppressive force. It was his bedroom where she rarely ventured, where he had posters of movies and drawings pinned up on the walls, where Richie would tumble messily through the window at a moment’s notice, getting his sneakers on the covers. Clearly, Eddie understood, in a slow parting of the veil, like he’d been shown a knowledge he’d lacked before. The Derry IT had created was a desperate, dank, dirty little town with ignorant and terrifying people, with knife-wounds and callous words, and always a blind eye. But that wasn’t Eddie’s Derry. It wasn’t the Derry that belonged to the Losers’. 

“This is our place,” Eddie said, under his breath. “IT doesn’t get to take it.” 

He could hear the rest of them behind him, bunch up around him and he wished he could share his understanding, because words would fail him. There were two Derrys, the one IT wished to keep with its ignorance and violence, and the one every child had created in their memories; the fresh green grass of summer in the Barrens, the fields where flowers and food grew plentiful, where daisies grew so thickly that to make a chain never required moving more than a foot in any direction. He reached out, and automatically, like it was a reflex he felt hands take his. 

Bill on his right, his hand tight in Eddie’s, cold and trembling lightly. Mike on his other side, linked with Richie, sweating a little with fear. Human. Painfully human. He heard the sounds of the rest of them linking hands, holding each other with a natural inclination, a childlike innocence, and the feeling of rightness only intensified. Like a rising sun, the top of the cavern lit up. Orange, cold lights floated downwards gently, like pollen on a breeze, round and wrong. 

“Close your eyes!” Mike shouted. “Don’t look at it!”

It was too late. Almost like falling asleep. Closer still to the hypnic jerk, the abrupt sensation of falling, Eddie drifted into the lights. The last real thing he could feel was the weight of hands in his, gripping him with a fierce strength.


	6. The Cavern

“Eddie!” Richie yelled, like it was wrenched from his throat. Mike reached for him, but he floated, upwards into the lights, his eyes glazed over like the glassy eyes of a doll, rising unnaturally. 

Beverly ran to him. She reached for him with a fierce, furious leap and caught onto his feet, like she was going to drag him down to her alone, but he was stuck. There was a terrible sound behind her, and Richie could see the snarled clasp of rock where the balloon had grown was cracking apart. Ben and Mike had run to join Bev, trying to drag Eddie back down and they stopped his ascent. 

“Help us!” Ben shouted, and broke Richie’s reverie. He sprinted forward at the same time as Bill did, as Stan limped towards them all. Mike gripped Eddie’s shin, and they all laid hands on him, pulling him downwards. It was shockingly hard, and Richie was afraid he would end up dislocating a joint, like Eddie was caught in the undertow of some terrible current, but they dragged him, and eventually he drifted back into their fierce grip. 

His feet touched the floor, but he was still unnaturally light, like if they let go he’d just float upwards again, away like a feather on a breeze. Richie gripped what he could reach, Eddie’s forearm, to hold him down, and suddenly he thought about Eddie breaking it, the first time. 

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Stan cried, from where he was pressing one of his shaky, bloody hands to Eddie’s shoulder to pin him. The cavern cracked ominously, the knot of rock in the centre, where the balloon had grown was filling with a strange growing shadow, like it was being born out of nothing. 

“Bev didn’t wake up either,” Bill said suddenly, quietly. “The first time. She didn’t wake up when we pulled her down.”

“What happened?” Stan urged, his hands tight over Richie’s, sweaty and heavy. “I don’t remember-!”

“I kissed her,” Ben said abruptly, like he was remembering it himself for the first time. Beverly nodded beside him and they shared a long look, like they were discussing something between themselves silently, and Richie’s hands trembled so badly he was struggling to keep Eddie pinned down, putting too much pressure on him. He wondered wildly for a moment if Eddie would have bruises after everything, if he’d take his jacket off and have Richie’s fingertips burned into his forearm. 

“IT’s coming!” Mike yelled. “Do something!”

He was right, the shadow grew and grew, and suddenly a leg came out of the knot of rock, unnatural and wrong, like an insect being born. It was spidery, and yet huge, angular and dark and it was quickly followed by another, and then yet another, each leg taller than any of them, creeping outwards, supporting something they couldn’t see yet. Richie could smell it, thick and heavy in the air, a smell unnervingly like papery mites, and dust, and mould, dark and damp. 

“It worked because I loved her,” Ben said, sudden and firm, like he’d been tracking a thought. “It woke her up, because- because I love her.”

Richie’s hands were shaking so badly they were going numb, cold along his fingers where he was gripping Eddie so tightly the blood was being driven out. He wanted to make a joke, like it was an instinct, he could see the two halves of it almost floating in the air, the kiss, and Ben, but he couldn’t open his mouth for long enough to piece it together, his jaw tight with terror. He could see out of the corner of his eye a great shadow come up out of the rock, huge and cold. The clown, balanced on endless, spidery legs, grey-damp and sharp, and he understood with a strange sort of finality that what he was seeing wasn’t what was really there at all, it was all his mind could make of the reality. The clown rocked back and forth as its endless legs drew it closer, its upper half swaying like a jack-in-the-box as it laughed a high stuttery sound. 

“Richie,” Bill said, his eyes fixed on the clown in front of them. “Wake him up! We can’t leave him!”

“I’m not leaving him!” Richie snapped, but he wasn’t sure where it came from, until Mike moved his hand from where it was holding Eddie’s sides, to land on Richie’s shoulder. 

“Richie,” he said, urgent and low, and the shadow behind him grew greater. Richie couldn’t imagine the bravery it took, to stay staring at him with his back to the monster than crept up on him, its footsteps small and sharp, like daggers or needles, kicking up clouds of dry clay as it crept forward. “Wake him up.”

It was like fighting instinct. His most learned response throughout most of his childhood had been to turn away from Eddie, to avoid getting too close in case people saw. He wished he could attribute it to bravery, but he hadn’t ever been brave, he was just too selfish and greedy to run and go away to live in a world where Eddie wasn’t. So he moved Beverly’s forearm with a quick, shaky grip out of his way, so he could get close enough. He didn’t lift his hand from Eddie’s shoulder, too afraid he would float back upwards. It was barely a kiss, really, was his first thought. Eddie was lax and cold under him, like - he thought with a silent shudder - like he was already dead. His mouth was dry, closed tightly, and Richie thought with growing despair that this wasn’t the kiss Eddie deserved. He could feel the Losers all hemmed in tightly around him, and he tried to ignore their gasps, the close footsteps of it, the weight and warmth of their hands on Eddie’s chest and arms, holding him down. For only a moment, he closed his eyes and kissed him, and his stomach swooped dramatically - not the hope or affection he’d always thought of, but the sickening nausea of being watched, the fear drawing his stomach into a tight cold ball. 

But then, suddenly there was warmth, even as IT drew closer, as huge claws swiped outwards. Eddie’s lips, at first a strange wrong cold, were warm and alive. He blinked, his eyes warming from the cold glassy grey of the deadlights to their natural brown, and his mouth opened like he was about to speak. He didn’t get the chance before Ben and Stan were shoving them, moving them all away from the slashing claw of Pennywise. Still, there was a terrible ripping sound, strangely like fabric and Eddie yelped in pain. Blood rained onto Richie’s face, catching him from where Bill had shoved Eddie back. They tumbled, and reeled back, the second swipe of the dagger-sharp leg missing them by inches. _It worked_ , he thought, even as Beverly and Bill slammed into his side, shoving him back to a little half-wall, where there was a narrow gap underneath. They were forced back under it, into the dry dirt to avoid the slashing leg, and Richie looked down at his hands automatically. In the right he held his stake, drawn from his belt loop he didn’t remember when, the other had Eddie’s hot hand entwined. He followed it, looking up from his clenching grip up to his sleeve, bloodied where Stan had grabbed him, a thick black stain near the collar, his face, grimacing and pale, and sweaty and whole, alive and awake. 

“Eddie,” he whispered, and the wall above them shook, and fell in great chunks, landing on the ground so heavily they drove up clouds of filthy dust. Eddie dropped his hand to pull his shirt over his nose and mouth and Richie copied him, the thick clayish air catching in his throat. Suddenly he stood, and Richie blinked up at him stupidly. There was a deep slash through the back of his jacket and shirt, a long wide gash bleeding steadily from shoulder-to-hip where IT had cut him. As the last stretch of rock fell to the ground, cracked cleanly through by IT’s daggers, Eddie screamed something. The rockfall was so loud he couldn’t register it, but he could see Eddie reel back, his own stake in his right hand, held like a javelin. The dust cleared and Eddie threw it, straight and true. It sank into IT’S underbelly like a thorn, but only a moment later IT screeched and clawed it away. It fell with a harmless little sound, stained up to the mid-length with black-greenish liquid. Eddie was jostled backwards, back into the tight knot of them all, and then IT reached into their little cave. 

IT snatched Bev up with monstrous hands, rippling with pompoms like strange growths. IT tossed her behind with no care, and Richie could see her, bloodied, facedown and silent in the filth of the cavern. They were too far to reach her, penned in by the spider-legs. Richie could hear Mike crying quietly, and saying something under his breath, again, and again like a prayer.

The flesh of Stan’s lower right leg was snarled, pumping out little washes of fresh blood over divots. He couldn’t seem to hold himself up anymore, and they’re going to die here, Richie realises. He can hear Mike properly now that they’re all crushed together in a corner, and IT’s creeping towards them as cold and sure as the sea. I’m so sorry, Mike is saying. The stake Eddie had thrown had penetrated IT’s underbelly and then slipped away, brushed off like a bug. It’s underneath Pennywise, soaking in a pool of Beverly’s blood, under a hanging, dangerously clawed appendage. Eddie’s breath is hot and ragged against the back of his shoulder. He meets Bill’s eyes, and of course Bill knows.

“Richie, no,” Bill says and they both shiver in unison. But IT’s coming close, and Richie’s eyes still burn from his own shallow blink at the deadlights. He can’t imagine how Eddie feels. He can see around the edges of IT’s huge hands, pale, the pulsing orange waves of energy building. Richie stops for a minute to think, because in his head, he can see Eddie floating, and going still above him and then a torrent of blood, so sudden and hot as it poured over his face, feeling hot and alive on him, like some cat curling into him. It circles again and again in his head, and every time he remembers it he’s struck by the realisation that it’s Eddie’s life, just pouring out of him through a hole in his back. Richie blinks. The vision clears for a moment and he sees Eddie, the real Eddie, standing shaky and pale, penned in behind his shoulder, and bleeding through the back of his shirt, standing but only for now. So, Richie turns to him, urgently. The energy around Pennywise’s hands is pulsing faster, resounding with a strange booming sound that Richie thinks everyone has to hear.

“Do you remember when we were kids?” Richie whispers quickly, only to Eddie, who’s looking up at him with confusion and irritation in his huge dark eyes, like he’s pissed off at Richie taking a detour through memory lane. “It was summer, I don’t remember how old we were, but one day it was just me and you, and we walked all over town, and that we went out behind the Tracker warehouse? We went into the field?” Richie asks, quiet but quick. Eddie blinks at him blankly, a little crease between his eyebrows as he tries to remember.

“We must have been teenagers,” Richie chokes out. “During the heatwave. In the field we used to play baseball in, but it was just me and you and-”

“In the sunflowers,” Eddie says suddenly. The crease between his eyebrows eases for a second as he remembers, but then his whole face crumples. “Richie, what are you doing?”  
“Just…” He says, unsure and wordless. He looks back at IT, the power building around it, sucking colour into it, and the stake underneath IT. He looks back at Eddie and he wishes he had words, or time, but he doesn’t, so he says the only thing he can think of. “Always, y’know?”

It had been such a sunny day, blisteringly hot, and Eddie had complained with nearly every step, but he’d followed Richie anyway. They don’t have a destination in mind, but somewhere in the distance Richie could see a field of green, like a rolling lush sea, deeper into the abandoned farmland than they usually ever went, and he wants to run his fingers over the tops of the flowers there.

Yellow and brown, bobbing heads turned towards them like they were the sun. They walked until Richie could feel the sweat dripping down his spine in a thin line. Eddie was at his back, casting a small blanket of cool shadow, and the soil crunched under his sneakers when they made it to the field. It was cooler in there, somehow, as though the verdant, waxy leaves were shading them.

Eddie was pleased, Richie could tell immediately, though he didn’t say it aloud. They sat in the field, pressed close by the hedgerows, and the sunflowers came up over their heads. They sat facing each other, pressed together at the knees by the closeness of the rows and Richie had pushed his glasses up his nose, and watched Eddie shiver lightly as his sweat cooled. Richie picked a sunflower, too small to catch the sun properly, a little thing, and he plucked the petals off one by one, and laid them on Eddie’s upturned wrists.

“He loves me,” he’d said, and started to do a Voice, something girlish and young. “He loves me not-” and Eddie had leaned forward, sunflower petals falling from his wrists to land on Richie’s lap, and kissed him.

Eddie had tasted like the Kool-Aid they’d had in Richie’s house, and his face was shiny with sunscreen and Richie had dropped the sunflower with shaking hands. Pollen stuck to his fingertips and when he’d put his hand on Eddie’s face, he’d left little gold flecks on his cheek.

Richie didn’t remember what they’d done afterwards, only that they’d never talked about it. For a while he thought maybe it was a dream, but for a long time afterwards, there’d be a moment where he’d smell coconut sunscreen, or cherry Kool-Aid, and clean, hot soil, and remember how it felt to have Eddie lean forward and press his lips against his.

It smells like salt, and blood, and damp in this cavern, but if Richie concentrates, he can remember the sweet, light scent of coconuts.

He sprints forward.

He hears Eddie behind him screaming his name, but he doesn’t sound confused, he sounds furious. It’s ok, he wants to say, it’s really not a big deal, but he doesn’t have the time or inclination to speak, if he speaks Eddie will stop calling his name. There’s something in Richie, some secret dark yawning hole. He picks up the stake Eddie had thrown, holds it like a baseball bat because that feels right. There’s something in Richie that isn’t normal, he thinks, it’s some hidden patch of pitch and it makes him want to do things like scare Eddie to hear him breathe faster, or tease him to hear him yell, or run from him to hear him scream his name. It’s been building for decades, like the result of quashing endless pain has only congealed it into something hard and cold and shiny.

He reels back and he swings the stake. It cracks soundly against IT, the resulting judder sending shocks of pain up his arm. IT reels around, away from Beverly and IT’s endless maw begins to open. Bev is underneath his multiple spidery legs, and when Richie gets near her he can sees chitin, like a scorpion underneath IT’s underbelly and he holds the stake like a javelin and something rubs against his thumb. He knows, he’s not sure entirely how he knows, but he’s certain that it’s one of their names carved into the wood, and he doesn’t see who’s name, but does it really matter at all? 

There’s a cracking noise when it penetrates, like it’s snapping apart the layers of protection. Suddenly, there’s a sickly curtain of guts spilling out, a grey and black flood of mucus and slime and unidentifiable organs. Bev rolls, instinct guiding her away from the mess, and suddenly she’s in front of IT, still crumpled on the cavern ground. Richie can see Ben and Bill running towards her, and then the gunk spilling from IT’s underbelly spurts again, and splashes onto his glasses. Pennywise laughs above him, some horrible, high, chanting laugh, and sways forward but Richie drags the stake out, the wood is warm in his hands, and it grinds grotesquely against shattered chitin on the way out, like a knife through bone. IT reels back, like it’s trying to get at him, but IT’s made itself too big for this space. He drives the stake in again. It’s wet, soaked in the thick mucus and he loses his grip. It sinks deeper into the chitin, and more fluid drips from the burrowing wound. 

He tucks his head against his shoulder to scrub the gunk from his glasses haphazardly. Through the grey murky blur he can see the Losers gathering. He runs towards them, and he trips over a rock once, smashing his knees to the ground loudly. The pain doesn’t hit, only the sound and behind him he feels a wave of wind whip above his head, like something had swung at him. Bev and Ben are gripping each other with no gentleness, she’s grimacing, her head is bleeding into her hair, he’s still coughing out brown dust, but still they run together. Richie throws himself to his feet and runs forward at a full tilt angle until he collides with the Losers in the corner. There’s a strange warm rush of energy when they’re all reunited that Richie can feel it in his bones, something that feels natural when they’re all together.

They’re beside him, and Mike is saying something, yelling something. Stan’s eyes are glittering, and Richie thinks he might be crying, but he’s beside them all the same. Mike is right. The moments that follow, pouring that anger and pain onto the monster that caused it feels right, and purifying. IT’s small, in the end. They take IT’s heart, cold and damp, all of their hands on top of each other’s, and squeeze, Richie’s fingers over Eddie’s, tucked into Mike’s soft hand, and It dies.

Richie can feel Eddie seething, which tickles him because he’s doing it so silently, limping along on his twisted ankle, tucked under Richie’s right arm while Bill leads them out.  
“St-straight up, not much longer,” Bill says, reassuringly, and their shadows twitch and move along the walls, coming closer and fading away as they inch through the Neibolt underbelly.

“Straight up!” Richie repeats to Eddie, unnecessarily. “Not much longer.” His voice sounds weird, higher than normal and a tinge hysterical, and his ribs ache when Eddie turns around slowly to glower at him.

“I can hear, I wasn’t stabbed in my ears,” Eddie hisses and Richie stumbles over a chunk of loose rock, stubbing his toes.

“You were barely stabbed at all,” Richie says, but he knows it’s weak and so does Eddie, since he’s already wrestling his shirt upwards - and when did Eddie get abs, what the fuck - and turning, and pointing vehemently at the inch-deep wound on his back. 

Privately he tucked a thought away down in the pit of his mind where he kept most things that hurt. He thought he’d probably just end up never telling anybody the truth, that he was no saviour, that he hadn’t kissed Eddie to save his life, but because he had a sick, terrible hope in him. Another secret, ready to add to the pile collecting somewhere in Richie Tozier’s trashpit of a brain.

Mike urges them to hurry as Eddie directs them, his unerring sense of direction clear and sure as they move through endless pitch tunnels. Richie gets it, he does, they need to go fast since the whole fucking nightmare is about to literally collapse on their pretty little heads, but Eddie can only move so fast, and Stan is limping too, Ben on his right side, Bev on his left, holding him up.

There’s blood streaking down his right leg, but there’s light ahead. Then suddenly, all in a rush, they’re out, helping each other out through the collapsing tunnel of Neibolt. Richie’s knees are hurting, like they never did the first time they did this, but Eddie’s tucked under his arm, so he guesses it balances out.

Mike is the first to spring to action, he drops quickly by Stan, and tears up the leg of his dirty, bloodied chinos. Stan’s lower leg looks like minced meat, like something clawed and ancient and terrible wound a tentacle around it and squeezed until skin split. Richie has no goddamn idea how they’re going to explain this in the hospital.

“We’ll have to say his leg g-got run over,” Bill says suddenly, like he’s inside Richie’s head. He rips the sleeve of his shirt off with a grimace, and a slight intake of breath that indicates something’s paining him, and he hands the fabric to Mike. Mike, God bless him, is doing his best to compress Stan’s leg into something that no longer resembles an uncooked hamburger patty, but there’s only so much he can do. He lays the fabric over the vest that Beverly had wrapped around it earlier, compressing it much more firmly. 

“Don’t think he’ll bleed out,” Mike says grimly, and Bill reaches out a hand to help him to his feet. “But we need to get to a doctor, right now.”

“I’ll call a cab,” Ben says, “It’ll be faster than an ambulance.” But Richie’s not so sure. Ambulances in Derry were never quick, but now that IT is dead, he wonders if the low-lying fog of ignorance is lifted, if people will no longer turn away from each other, and things will work here, like they’re supposed to everywhere else. He doesn’t know.

He hopes so, but there’s something terrible in him that’s thinking maybe people won’t even notice the lifting of the fog, because it’s so much easier to be ignorant.

“Always good to hear I’m not gonna bleed out,” Stan says, but he sounds bleary and faraway, and Richie’s stomach clenches with fear. So strange to be soaked in it, drenched in absolute eldritch terror for so long, he’d almost forgotten what it was like to be just plain scared, in a simple, childlike way, because his friend is bleeding.

“Eddie needs a doctor too,” Richie says. His face is bleeding too, he can feel a cut above his eyebrow bleeding sluggishly, and throbbing, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t need stitches. “While my nursing outfit is top-notch, my training leaves something to be desired.”

Ben comes back, tripping neatly over a piece of abandoned plywood, and he shoves his phone back into his ripped jean pocket. “Cab’s coming.”

Ben is looking around at all of them, and Richie knows what he’s seeing, a group of filthy, sweating, bloodied, and exhausted forty-somethings with various injuries and an air of quiet exhaustion. But it’s Bev who speaks, and she’s already trading Stanley off to Bill, who takes her place under Stan’s arm neatly.

“We all go into a hospital together, they’re gonna call the cops,” Bev says firmly. “Stan’s gotta go, Bill, and Mike, you guys can take him, right? You look the…” she looks around at them again, and swallows hard. “You look the most normal. Eddie, lemme look at your back.”

“Hey,” Richie says as he helps Eddie turn for Bev’s perusal. “Maybe it’d be ok, we’ll just tell ‘em we’re in a weird, elderly fight club.”

“Elderly?” Eddie starts, but Bev shakes her head. She touches the side of the wound on Eddie’s back quickly, clinically, and something in Richie’s heart is hurting but he’s not sure what.

“I don’t know a-about you guys,” Bill says. “But if a cop tries to take me for questioning right now, after that, I might just tell them the goddamn truth. We can take Stan in. Anybody else need a hospital?”

Bev shakes her head, and the rest of the group thankfully make negative noises.

“I can take care of Eddie,” she says. “It’s just a puncture, it doesn’t need stitches, I’m pretty sure. Just needs to be cleaned and bandaged, maybe packed. You’ve had a tetanus shot recently, right?”

Eddie and Richie both stare at her.

“Stupid question, huh?” She asks dryly, and suddenly the air seems to get heavy, and thick when her mouth firms into a line. “I can wrap it up for you. Pretty good at first aid.”

“Bev,” Richie says, and doesn’t know how to go on. She waves him off anyway. In the distance Richie can hear the cab coming closer, the faint whining roar of it coming up these empty streets. “We can...I’ll get the cab to drop us back at the Townhouse after we take care of Stan, and we’ll just… go from there, ok?”

He doesn’t know what he wants to hear, but he knows that suddenly he feels tired. More tired than he’s felt in a long time, but then, once he thinks about it, he’s felt more alive in the past few days than he has in decades. Makes sense, he guesses, and watched Mike and Bill help Stan into the cab.

Everything balances out, eventually.

Eddie disappeared into his room with Bev as soon as they returned to the Townhouse. The knock on the hotel door was quiet but decisive, and Richie opened it before he could really think too much about it. Eddie stood on the other side, and held up a first aid kit like a shield.

“Hey,” he said. “You disinfect your scratches yet?”

Richie swallowed. “I mean, I showered.”

“Water isn’t a disinfectant, asshole,” Eddie hissed and Richie let him in. “Do you have any idea the kid of disgusting bacteria there was down there, you need to properly clean any scratches you got, anything, because-“

“I guess I have a couple cuts on my legs,” Richie admitted just to quiet him. “I’m fine everywhere else.”

“Are you sure?” Eddie wanted to know and Richie bristled. 

“What, you wanna strip me down and check, asshole?”

“Don’t tempt me. No, I just don’t want to have done all that shit for you to die of fucking MRSA, you-“

“Alright!” Richie said, and then belatedly. “Thank you.”

“You don't have to thank me,” Eddie said, confused. He dropped a huge blue bag into Richie’s bed and unzipped it. 

“Jesus, did you rob a pharmacy?” Richie said without thinking, and then winced. Eddie touched the inside of the bag gently, the tongue of the zip and sighed. 

“I didn’t know what to bring when I left,” he said. “But pretty much everything in the medicine cabinet was mine so I. I just tipped it all in here. I don’t know,” Eddie finished and Richie’s hands itched to pet his back, but he didn’t know if that was ok now they weren’t in danger anymore. 

“Anyway, thank god for Stan right?”

“What?”

“Oh, I forgot your phone was smashed. Bill texted. Stan’s ok. He said and I quote “I lived so I win.””

“I love that little dork,” Richie said tearfully, abruptly overcome. 

“I know, me too.”

“Eds,” Richie started and didn’t know how to go on, but Eddie shook his head anyway. 

“Just... sit down, and let me see your legs,” Eddie said. Richie obeyed, and dragged his sweatpants down his legs, standing then into the floor. 

“Careful,” he said. “Try to restrain yourself. You don’t wanna be ruined for all other men for the rest of your life,” he said breezily and sat down on the bed with a thump. 

“Fuck’s that supposed to mean, asshole?” Eddie said hotly, and clenched his fist around a little glass bottle in the blue bag. 

“Nothing, dude, it was just a joke,” Richie said lamely. If he was better rested, less raw, more at ease he would have carried on the bit until Eddie had no choice but to laugh, but he couldn’t. Not when Eddie was sitting on the bed next to him, lining up bottles and tubes and bandages like little soldiers.  
Eddie moves Richie’s legs for him, dragging him by the calves until his feet lay either side of Eddie’s lap. He rubbed hand sanitizer into his hands and up to his elbows, and then put on gloves and Richie abruptly wanted to cry. 

“You didn’t develop a latex allergy, right?” Eddie wanted to know, and Richie had to swallow roughly three times before he could speak. 

“No,” he said, and if he sounded hoarse or weak, Eddie didn’t seem to mind. He surveyed Richie’s pale legs first, and Richie could see him noting every mark, the deep bruises on both his knees, the shallow cut across his left shin, the gash on his upper right ankle. 

“This isn’t so bad,” Eddie told him.

“Yeah,” Richie said and wanted desperately to make a joke, but he couldn’t find one. “It was just my legs really, from the climb and… stuff.”

“And your forehead,” Eddie said. “I’ll fix that too.”

Richie inhaled sharply, so convinced he was going to cry that his breath hurt in his chest. 

Eddie cleaned the scratches first, stroked cold antiseptic over the skin gently. “Don’t move.”

“I’m not moving,” he snapped and Eddie blinked at him. 

“Tell me,” Eddie said, and expertly applies a bandaid to a deep scratch. 

“Tell you-?” Richie repeated, and wondered if he was going to throw up, if Eddie was going to wince and freak out. 

“What’s wrong with you,” Eddie said. “Aside from the obvious, duh.”

“Duh,” Richie echoed. “I don’t know, Eds. Probably just regular-shmegular trauma.”

“Bullshit,” Eddie said quietly, and moved finally to the cut on Richie’s forehead. It had long since stopped bleeding but Eddie cleaned it anyway and placed a bandaid over it neatly. A moment of relief was all Richie was allowed when Eddie moved his small, strong hands from Richie’s bare legs, but somehow it was worse when Eddie held his face. 

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Richie told Eddie. Eddie crossed a second bandaid over Richie’s forehead, and pressed it into place. 

“I missed you,” Eddie said. Richie picked up a tiny bottle of antiseptic and examined it.

“Alright, don’t cry about it,” he said but Eddie kept looking at him, guarded and afraid, so he said “I missed you too,” surprising them both. Bill’s words kept circling in his head and he searched for a snatch of phrase to tell Eddie that it didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember him exactly because he had always known there was something missing. He had assumed it was something missing from him, that he’d just been made wrong but now he was pretty sure he had just known somewhere that he was supposed to remember Eddie. He remembered Stan once saying that the reason IT had shaken him so badly was because it broke the rules he’d thought there were: that it offended him. He had said it was unnatural. There was something in that Richie agreed with. It was offensive to think Eddie had been scooped out of his mind like seeds inside a pumpkin. Threads had been left, and he’d never known why, why he was so fastidious about cleaning his wounds, or why he was drawn to small brunettes with sharp tongues and big eyes. 

“Good,” Eddie said, and for a moment he sounded like he had when they were young and brave. 

“Oh, thanks,” Richie said, and Eddie grinned, immediately on his wavelength. “Don’t apologise or anything. No ‘sorry you had to miss me, Richie, you’re my best friend, Richie-‘“

Eddie flicked an empty tube of antibiotic ointment at his face and Richie ducked it expertly. 

“That sounds nothing like me!”

“Yes it does!” Richie said, and continued in his best impression, with an additional whine for effect. “‘Oh I missed you Richie, I was so lonely without you-“

“I wasn’t!” Eddie insisted so fiercely that Richie knew it was a lie, and his heart ached. 

“I was,” he said and the truth surprised him. “All the time.” 

Like a truth too big to explain, Richie had been so lonely that it had become an inscrutable part of him. He had friends, people who liked him and who he liked, people he would grab a beer with after work or reserve tickets for in the office. He had helped a friend from his apartment building move once, and spent all day hefting furniture and boxes from a van and she had been so grateful that she’d bought them all pizza and beer and made little handmade gifts to thank them. Richie had held the soap she’s made just for him in one hand and hugged her with the other and thought “this must be what friendship feels like. Right?” 

But still, the loneliness. Because she’d asked him out a few weeks after, and he’d awkwardly declined and it jarred him. Loneliness probably met its death in being known, he thought, and it made sense to feel alone when he was pretty sure nobody he ever known him before in his life. For a very long time there’s been a familiar sense of shame entwined with that loneliness, a surety that it was solely to be blamed on himself. Ever since Mike had called him, that had started to ease. 

“You were wrong, you know,” Eddie said abruptly and then winced like he hadn’t meant to sound so intense. 

“Probably not, but go on,” Richie said.

“You don’t remember yet,” Eddie said. “But I do. You said - before we were fighting - about the girl you slept with… you uh, you said you hooked up once and then never saw each other again.” 

“Yeah,” Richie said, at a loss. 

“I don’t remember the first time yet,” Eddie said and Richie’s palms were grossly damp so he put them on the sheets surreptitiously. “I only remember the ones after it.”

“There was-?” Richie started and then swallowed hard, overcome with a confusing feeling of pride in Eddie talking to him about what he’d always called “private stuff” dismissively. 

“Yeah,” Eddie muttered. “Then my mom got sick and you left and she died and I left for college.” 

“Oh,” Richie said. 

There was a strange long stretch of silence between them where they both wanting to fit apologies, but couldn’t. 

“I’m sorry you had to deal with your mom on your own,” Richie said, instead of apologizing for forgetting. 

“I wasn’t alone, Mike was here,” Eddie mumbled. 

“I know,” Richie said. “I meant I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

“You couldn’t have been,” Eddie said and though the words were harsh it sounded like absolution. 

“How long- uh, how long were, did we-“

“I guess it was around six months,” Eddie said. “You don’t remember any of it?”

“Between the first time and my first real gig in LA I don’t really remember anything,” Richie said. “I don’t remember leaving Derry, or where I even stayed when I left.” 

“It’ll probably come back,” Eddie said abruptly.”Now that IT’s dead. Do you think we’ll remember?” 

“I don’t know,” Richie said. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. I could tell you. If you wanted me to.”

“I could tell you what I remember,” Eddie said, quietly, like it was a fair deal.  
“Yeah,” Richie said, and he did.


	7. The Pier

“We were the only ones left, us and Mike,” Richie said. “It was a Thursday so my parents were at work, Mike probably was too because it was just us. I was at home, I remember I was in my room listening to music listening to music and writing an act. And you came up the stairs because you’d let yourself in and knocked on my bedroom door. I always thought that was funny: that you wouldn’t knock on my front door when you knew I was home alone, but you always knocked on my bedroom door.”

“Yeah, dummy,” Eddie said and immediately regretted it, waiting for the gentle flirtatious energy to disparate. But it didn’t. “In case you were… busy.”

“Busy,” Richie repeated. “Busy jerk-“

“Or with someone!”

“With who?”

“I don’t know. It could have been anyone. Girls liked you.”

“Helpful,” Richie said. “Super cool that girls liked me considering I’m gay.”

Richie stopped for a moment and Eddie didn’t push him. “I never said that before.”

“What, that girls like you?” Eddie teased gently. “You never said it ‘cause you’re not a liar.” 

“You should say it,” Richie blurted. 

“Why? You look like you’re gonna pass out.” 

“Yeah I kinda feel like I could throw up,” Richie said. “But still. It’s kinda nice.”

“I’m,” Eddie said and his mouth stopped working, like his tongue had been stapled to the roof of his mouth. “Does it even matter, Rich? We both know.” 

“It feels better,” Richie said and Eddie was deeply embarrassed, like he had accidentally put too much pressure on the moment and he was turning it into a big deal. 

“I’m gay,” he said abruptly. “You’re wrong, it doesn’t feel good.”

“It doesn’t? What’s it like?”

“It’s kinda like that time I did coke,” Eddie admitted. “I feel like, kinda hysterical. My heart is pounding and it’s like some… grody combination of nauseated and ashamed.”

“I can’t believe you did drugs,” Richie said, which helped, in its own weird way. 

“Once,” Eddie insisted. “It wasn’t for me.” Coke had made him move too fast, and Eddie had hated it. He’d figured he was too high-strung for stimulants. 

“Go on,” Eddie said after a moment and Richie smiled at him, an open encouraging smile that made his heart beat like a teenager. 

“Ok,” Richie said. “You used to go to the track all the time, remember? And you came over to my house because it was still early. You stole some clothes from me and took a shower.” 

“They were my shorts,” Eddie said abruptly and Richie thought about it. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you had left them. But it was my shirt.”

“Probably,” Eddie said, because it was certainly true. For reasons he had never examined too closely in case they bit, he had often borrowed shirts, sweaters, hoodies from Richie. 

“You used to steal my clothes all the time,” Richie said. Open ended. Never pushing too hard, leaving enough space for a joke or a change of subject to shatter the moment. It was such a deeply ingrained instinct to bite back his thoughts that Eddie had to consciously search for the words. He wasn’t sure how to voice how it had felt to take a tshirt out of Richie’s drawer, even if it was his favorite and know Richie wouldn’t tell him to put it back. To put it on and let the hem hang below his hips, the sleeves open enough that the fabric was loose, the collar slipping forwards or backwards on him, dipping below the bump of bone at the top of his spine or the divot between his collarbones. How it smelled like the fabric softener the Toziers used, or sometimes like Richie’s deodorant, surprisingly masculine and dark. He could make a joke. He didn’t want to. 

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “It made me feel like you loved me.”

Richie looked at him, like was balanced on a knife edge of unsurety. And then suddenly he averted his gaze and Eddie felt obscenely disappointed. 

“You wanted my letterman?” He teased, and Eddie scoffed. 

“You mean your mathlete jacket?” He said and Richie smiled at him, looking relieved. 

“You asked me, once.” Eddie said and the shame built and built. “Right before you left, if I wanted to come with you.”

Paltry, useless phrases, totally unable to convey the importance of the moment. Richie had picked him up in his truck and they’d driven to Bangor for no good reason. They’d driven until Richie had found a pier off the Penobscot, and they’d parked up, and sat on the end of it, watching boats go by. Richie had wandered off to pee and stretch his legs, and came back with handfuls of daisies and peonies. He’d put them between their thighs as they hung their feet off the pier and watched the river. They’d plucked the flower heads from the stems and tossed them into the water, and watched them float away, or sink under the current.

They’d spent the drive there making fun of each other, fitting as much happiness into the minutes as they could, like they both knew that Richie would ask and they both knew that Eddie would say no. 

“That’s you,” Eddie said when they drove past a scarecrow in a field, its hat tipped off its head, wearing tattered jeans and a mangled Hawaiian shirt. 

“That’s you,” Richie had said when they drove past a billboard with a beaming, pretty girl on it advertising soda. 

“You wish,” he’d retorted before he could think too much about it. It was strange to be out of the house. His ma had been sick for a while and he still felt faintly guilty that he’d left at all, but Richie had asked him. 

“Nah,” Richie said. “I’m good.”

There had been a moment, like millions of others that had made Eddie’s heart hurt, a space where he could have changed so much. Instead, he had made a joke and let it flit away. 

When the sun dipped, and the wind coming off the water grew too cold to be so close, they went back off the pier and sat on the front of the truck. Eddie bought them both milkshakes in a tourist trap near the water. They had dripped little lines out of their straws, and let the milkshakes -Richie’s chocolate, Eddie’s strawberry- dribble out in the shapes of their initials. 

“I’m gonna go soon,” Richie said and Eddie startled. 

“Finish your drink and then we’ll leave,” Eddie said but he had a terrible feeling growing heavy in his stomach like he had swallowed a rock. 

“No,” Richie said, staring at the ground. Their initials were drying in the setting sun. “I mean Derry.”

“Oh,” Eddie said. 

“You could come with me,” Richie said, and Eddie could tell he wanted to sound casual but he didn’t, he sounded vulnerable. He cleared his throat, and fiddled with his straw and Eddie looked at him. 

He could, Eddie had thought. He could go with Richie and they could drive to a city where Richie could make people laugh for money and Eddie might go to school and become a vet - and would they live together? Not for long or people would wonder. Maybe they make enough money to buy apartments right next to each other and knock the walls down through the middle so nobody would know. They could walk through their respective doors and meet again in private. Would they go out to eat together? It would look weird if they went somewhere nice, like it was a date.

“My mom,” Eddie said. Even if Eddie did go to some city where it was always sunny and he and Richie had a secret place to spend time together and they held hands when they walked to the grocery store Eddie's mother would still be in Derry, dying alone. 

“I know,” Richie said. “But you don’t owe her anything! We-“

“You think I need to owe her something to take care of her?” Eddie snapped, and pressed one hand against the hood of the truck to ground himself. 

“I think she doesn’t deserve it,” Richie said mutinously. 

“Don’t talk about-“

“I love you,” Richie said. The milkshake Eddie had been holding slipped from his hand a little, landing with a soft noise on the trunk of the car, the cold perspiration chilling his hand. “I mean it, Eds, I love you, we could go-“

“I think you better take me home,” Eddie said. Richie didn’t look at him, and Eddie didn’t either. They both faced the water, and watched the Penobscot flow by, feeding the leaves they had dropped in back to Derry. 

“Eddie-“

“My mom needs her meds,” Eddie said numbly. “I should go home.”

Richie had left two weeks later, and Eddie had watched his truck idle on the corner for minutes from his window before it kicked into gear and left. 

“I hurt you,” Eddie said and Richie looked at him guardedly, like he never used to. There was a patch over his his right temple that was beginning to silver. Eddie found himself spilling the story out, feeling as vulnerable as if he had skinned himself and shown Richie what was inside. 

“I pushed you,” Richie said eventually, when Eddie had run out of words, and Eddie could have cried. 

“You were right to,” he said. “I couldn’t leave my mom, Richie but - but I should have told you that. I should have-“

“It doesn’t matter,” Richie said abruptly, and he would have sounded cold if Eddie hadn’t known him. His eyes were fixed on the floor. “It is what it is.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said and Richie bent his head down like Eddie had put the weight of the world on his shoulders. He shoved up his glasses and pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Richie said, wetly. “Hey, do you wanna know something pathetic?”

“Please,” Eddie said, letting out a damp laugh, feeling raw.

“I really don’t think there was ever a time in my life when I wasn’t in love with you,” Richie said. 

“Richie,” Eddie said, stunned. 

“I know,” Richie said. “It’s so fucking sad, right?”

“No,” Eddie said, and adrenaline was flooding him so quickly he could feel himself shaking violently, sending little shudders across the mattress over to Richie like ripples in water. “It’s probably more pathetic to be so terrified your whole life that you pretend to be someone else, and you get so caught in the pretense that you can’t even tell the person you’re in love with that you love them.”

“Eds,” Richie said. 

“You were brave,” Eddie said. “You said once that you were always pushing, and you were right, and you probably won’t ever know how important that was to me.”

“I do,” Richie said. “Somewhere, I guess, y’know. That’s why I did.”

“Richie,” Eddie said. “Are you still?”

How unfair, Eddie thought abruptly after he spoke and he regretted asking. How cold and selfish to ask Richie to spill his guts again, and again.  


“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, the width of his thoughts too broad to voice. “I’m in love with you,” he said, because he hadn’t said it before, and there had been a million moments when he could have. 

“What?” Richie blinked at him. “Why are you sorry about that?”

“No, dummy,” Eddie said, exasperated. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you back then.”

There was a long, sweet pause but then Richie spoke. 

“You loved me then?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said quietly. “I just couldn’t…”

“I get it,” Richie said. 

“I know,” Eddie said with relief. 

“I love you,” Richie repeated and Eddie grinned at him, and felt like he’d been dipped in sugar, so sweet he had to snap it, so he punched Richie in the arm. Richie grinned at him and leaned over and Eddie thought he was going to hit him, but he didn’t. He just got close, and waited for a moment, and then at the same time they both leaned forward and kissed. 

“Hey, I’m a lot older than I was last time,” Richie said, and he was right. When they were twenty he’d been tall, and broad, but his shoulders and chest hadn’t been so wide. The faint cords of muscle along the insides of his arms, the soft belly, the thick dark body hair hadn’t been there. He’d been tall and whipcord thin, with broad shoulders and big feet. 

“Yeah, that’s how time works,” Eddie said but Richie didn’t laugh or roll his eyes. 

“I’m serious, I’m like… a lot bigger than I used to be,” Richie mumbled and Eddie could feel his face get hot with anger. He swallowed it back, in case Richie mistook it for irritation directed at him. Richie held both his hands out with his palms up like a shrug, like he was disappointed by his own body, and then gestured at his stomach. 

“You don’t have to keep seducing me, I’m already here,” Eddie said instead and this time Richie did laugh. 

“I’m just saying, you look… basically the same,” Richie said and Eddie laughed. 

“No way-“

“Way! And I just got like, big and inexplicably hairy-“

“Yeah, I get it, you’re super hot,” Eddie said. “Change the channel, bragger.”

Richie laughed properly then, the bridge of his nose flushed like he was pleased and embarrassed. 

“Hey,” Eddie said. “Do you wanna hear something pathetic?”

“Please,” Richie said, and grinned at him. 

“I have such a specific memory of this... I remember hanging out with Bill and we must have been like... fourteen, and I remember we were talking absolute shit and I asked him who the hottest Loser was, aside from Bev and Richie, obviously. And he just looked at me and said “why aside from them?” And I went “well you can’t say Bev because she’s the only girl.” And he said “uh so why can’t I say Richie?’ Like he was gearing up to get mad at me,” Eddie said and Richie blinked at him, lost. 

“And I remember saying oh well, Richie doesn’t count, everyone likes Richie. And Bill kinda squinted at me and I explained “obviously Richie doesn’t count because everyone would say Richie, and Bev doesn’t count because she’s the only girl, so who do you think? I think maybe Ben”. And Bill just kinda... looked at me for a minute and then said “Uh, I don’t think Richie’s the hottest” and like, genuinely blew my mind. And I looked at him and he looked at me and he said “I think Mike’s the most handsome, I guess” and I just went “Yeah, totally,” and cycled off. I remember just being... shocked. Like I had literally always thought that how I felt about you was how everyone felt, and it was a Richie thing, and I had nothing to do with it. I legitimately just assumed everyone thought that about you and we just weren’t talking about it.” 

“You... assumed everyone had a crush on me?”

“I would never have called it a crush! I just assumed that like… it was so inherent that we didn’t even need to talk about it! Like I fully assumed that that was just how you feel about your best friend when you’re really close.”

“You might be an idiot,” Richie said, and he sounded goddamn thrilled by it. 

“Yeah,” Eddie admitted. “Figuring out that gayness existed was a real revelation.”

“Hey, I can’t do this again,” Richie said abruptly and the bottom dropped out of Eddie’s stomach. “I’m not… We need to talk.”

“Ah,” Eddie said. “We’re not even dating and you’re breaking up with me?”

“No, just… No, idiot, I’m saying I can’t just do this shit again where we don’t talk about it, so I need to talk about it. Ok?” Richie said, and he sounded faint and shaky. 

“Ok,” Eddie said, softer than he meant to.

“What are we doing?” Richie said, and Eddie flinched like he’d thrown something at him. “Like… I don’t know, Eds. I’m just… here’s the thing, when it comes to you, I’m not really convinced I have any fucking self-respect and if you tell me you wanna hook up and that’s it I’ll probably do it. But-”

“Don’t,” Eddie said. “Don’t do that. Just, please, stop assuming shit like that, you always do that and I don’t know why, I don’t know how.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, you just - and I know I hurt you, but you hurt me too, y’know, so I don’t think that’s a reason - I just want you to stop thinking that this doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you.”

Richie was quiet for a moment, and then he pulled in his legs, and touched the X of two bandaids crossed over his knee. Eddie trembled, little waves of motion carrying across the sheets.

“Yeah,” Richie said. “I have shitty self-esteem, to be honest.”

“I get it,” Eddie said. “I do. I just need you to know the truth, you know? That it was never unrequited.”

“Until I came back, I thought I was basically a virgin,” Richie said, and Eddie blinked at the change in subject. “Isn’t that wild?”

“Sounds… confusing for you,” Eddie said, and Richie nodded. 

“I basically walked in the restaurant and I remembered, and I guess I just thought I should probably get drunk. And it didn’t seem like you wanted to talk about it, so I… kept drinking. And then Bill brought up the fucking subject, and I was so drunk I couldn’t tell if you had forgotten or worse, if you were lying, and I think I kinda attacked you-”

“Hardly. I think I gave as least as good as I got,” Eddie said, and Richie picked at the edge of the bandaid. Eddie touched the back of his hand lightly to make him stop. 

“Yeah,” Richie said. “You always did. My point is, I was confused, and that’s why I acted like that. But it’s ok, y’know?”

“I know,” Eddie said softly. We’re not teenagers anymore. We need to actually talk about stuff.”

“Exactly. Like, I wanna say that I want for you to come to LA with me, but your life is in New York and I don’t know if that’s fair. I could do New York, if you wanted. I could audition for SNL or something. If you wanted to stay, I mean. Together.”

“Can I tell you something? I fucking hate New York. I came here because it seemed important when I was younger, but it’s so dirty and cramped and everyone acts like they fuckin’ hate each other.”

“So that’s a veto on the big city..?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I wanna try LA, if you wanna go back there.”

“I do,” Richie said. “Maybe it’s stupid, but I really like LA. You meet the phoniest people sometimes and it’s funny because you can tell they’re just acting phony ‘cause they think they’re supposed to and it’s like… performative. It’s super meta. I kinda think you’d love it, honestly.”

“Ok,” Eddie said. “LA. Are we- should we live together?”

“That’d be nice,” Richie mumbled, so dismissive that Eddie knew it was important. “But I don’t wanna stay in my old place.”

“Why?”

“It’s just… it’s just somewhere that I bought when I was making money and it’s kinda soulless. It might be cool to move.”

“Yeah, let’s immediately go through the most stressful things possible during the first real period of our relationship, let’s move across the country, and process my divorce, and then try sell a house,” Eddie said. “Any other huge stressors you wanna try out? You wanna adopt a kid while we’re at it?”

Richie laughed, and his smile was something peaceful, something that made Eddie yearn. “I think we’ll be ok. Maybe save the kid for the future.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “You know, sure.”

“Sure,” Richie repeated, and then he grinned at him, wide and open and vulnerable, and kissed him, his big hands cupping the whole of Eddie’s face like he was holding something precious, and all Eddie could see behind his eyelids was Richie’s face that day they went to the pier, when he’d put flowers in between their skinny thighs, and the wind had thrown his messy hair around his angular face. He found himself thinking about peonies and daisies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pier scene was inspired fully by a conversation I had with [steph](https://easycomfort.tumblr.com/) who insisted that Richie and Eddie would drive all the way to Bangor, and watch the sunset, and kiss, and I took that lovely idea and made it sad, sorry. Thanks for always being there to share in my hyperfixations, I'm so glad we're the same person.


	8. Epilogue

“Hey, dickhead,” Eddie called, as soon as the show ended and the lights dimmed. A security guard turned to give him a baleful, suspicious look. 

“Hey, I don’t know that guy,” Richie said in a worried tone to the guard, as he bounded over. The security guard looked at him and then looked at Eddie and took a single step forward. 

“Just kidding!” Richie said brightly, and grabbed Eddie’s hand to drag him away, past the throng of people dressed in black backstage. 

“You’re gonna get me body slammed some day,” Eddie said as Richie dragged him past his agent neatly. “Hey Seth.”

“Hey, Eddie. Richard,” Seth said. “We need to talk about-“

“About how dehydrated I am after that show? You’re right,I should get some water,” Richie said and barreled past him. They approached the overexcited throng of reporters awaiting their attention in the small press room. 

“Ok!” Richie announced and pushed Eddie forward, his hand on his back like he was presenting him. “Five minutes and anybody who’s a dick gets thrown out,” he said. The journalists swarmed closer and Eddie took a step back automatically. 

“Hey, Eddie,” said a woman he had never met before. She was holding a microphone, and a little backpack, and her press badge swayed against her tshirt. “How did you meet Richie?”

“Childhood friends,” he said and a man elbowed up beside her.  


“You’re notoriously close friends with Bill Denbrough,” he said to Richie, looking over the top of Eddie’s head. “Since he came out, there have been rumors- were you two ever involved?”

“Gross,” Richie said in a businesslike tone. “No.”

The tall man swung his mic towards Eddie so abruptly that he flinched. 

“What about you?” He repeated and Richie stared at him. 

“Also gross,” Eddie said. “No. He’s dating my brother.” 

That sent up another flurry of activity, but Eddie didn’t panic. Mike and Bill has asked them to let their relationship slip, so it would fall through the cracks of Richie’s fame. 

“Who’s your brother?” Another reporter called, from further back in the little scrum. 

“Mike Hanlon,” Eddie said. “W-“

“Was that your last name before you got married?” The same tall man asked, and Eddie stepped a little from him, frowning openly. 

Another female reporter, with a buzz cut called out: “Eddie, why keep your relationship a secret for so long?”

“It hasn’t-“

“Eddie, what do you think about the rumours Richie’s substance abuse?”

“Richie, why come out now?” Another reporter called and Richie wound his hand around Eddie’s wrist and eased him back. 

“Oh, I’m afraid we’re out of time! We have to go. Have a great day, bye,” he said. 

“Hold on,” Eddie said quietly, then he stepped forward a little, raising his voice to be heard above the clamour. “Richie isn’t an addict, the drug allegations started after a public PTSD episode - which we are all aware is nothing to be ashamed of. And six months isn’t a very long time to keep a relationship quiet. We did it so we could relax, and have some time alone after the wedding, and finally, Richie, and y’know- _anyone_ in the community is entitled to come out whenever they feel safe enough to. Ok, bye,” he said and pulled Richie away quickly as soon as he could. 

“Sorry,” Richie said. “It’s not usually this intense, it’s just-“

“A slow news week?”

“-I was gonna say it hasn’t died down yet since I came out, but you know, I can always count on you to make me feel better.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Eddie announced. “Now hurry up, Stan wants us to come with him to check out that house, before Patty arrives.”

“Alternatively,” Richie said. “We could take a nap in my dressing room, pick Patty up from the airport, and then meet Stan at the house.”

“You know what is so sad,” Eddie said. “The fact that I know you really just mean a nap, and yet I’m still agreeing.”

“It’s why you’re the love of my life,” Richie said breezily. “So we can support each other and be the extremely boring, old married couple we were always meant to be.”

“Halfway there,” Eddie said, and Richie grinned at him.


End file.
